Grounded For Life: Prodigy
by Thor2000
Summary: Lily's psychic and human potential kicks in, and she becomes a different person with powers and abilities she chooses to keep secret, if only she can keep them secret. This short story is non-canon with the series.
1. Chapter 1

Sean Finnerty trekked home alone after catching the bus home. His wife had the family car to take the kids from and to school and to catch her classes at the community college to further her life. Sean didn't mind the walk to the pub he owned with his lazy brother, but his attitude was better in the morning than at night. In the morning, he was always bustling to see the Red Boot Pub busy with customers and plenty of beers, but at night, after a hard day of some activity and as little as eighteen customers for the day, he was surly, angry at the world and cursing at whatever fate had in store for him. Sean worked hard for the little he got while his shiftless brother with his numerous covert deals and shady business schemes slid by with as little responsibility as possible.

His patience over his family's future weighing on his mind, Sean hastened his step as he hopped up on to the curb of his block of his neighborhood. A deep sigh from his lungs, a tired groan from his soul and a hastened walk past the O'Keefe house, he ambled past the front gate of his white two-story frame house and hopped up on the front porch. His hand checked to see if the front door was unlocked. He twisted the knob and it turned undeterred as he pushed forward and entered his house. First thing he saw was Eddie, his brother, who went to the bank and never returned back to the pub.

"Wait… who is that?" Sean started his usual game of over-acting histrionics. "You look so familiar…"

Eddie rolled his eyes from the football game on the television to his brother's annoyed theatrics.

"Oh, wait…" Sean continued. "Could you possibly be my brother? The one who turned our receipts over to the bank and never returned?!"

"You know you got a little vein in your forehead that's throbbing." Eddie nonchalantly underplayed his brother's anger by trying to distract him from the issue.

"I know about the vein!" Sean was pulling off his jacket to toss into the chair. "Where have you been, Eddie?"

"Busy?" Sean stared at him in disbelief. Filled with disdain and annoyed innocence, Eddie just tilted back a beer can to his lips and sipped its contents. Utterly disconnected from the feelings of his brother, he just pretended his brother was not around as he freeloaded on the surroundings and advantages of his Sean's home. From the kitchen, Sean's wife, Claudia, a busty beauty of brown-eyed female womanhood, came strolling forward carrying a laundry basket of fresh clean clothes as she made this house a home. Clad in a t-shirt to keep her brother-in-law from ogling her cleavage and sweatpants, she kissed her husband to welcome him home.

"How long as he been here?" Sean turned to her sitting in the easy chair to separate the clean laundry.

"He was here when I got home with the kids."

"Did you even go to the bank, Eddie?!"

"I covered the bank!" Eddie annoyingly settled the debate and controversy at which he was in the center. "I met a cute little redhead and took her to lunch." He sipped his beer again. "By the way, I can't go home for a while. It seems she may have got the idea I work for the CIA from somewhere."

Sean and Claudia shared a look of annoyed disbelief.

"Where would she get that idea, Eddie?" Claudia asked the stupid question that would place her in the unwanted position of being forced to cover up his lies.

"Probably when we were having sex at her place…" Eddie reacted indifferent to his own improper behavior. "I don't know where these things come from." His brother and sister-in-law grumbled at his audacity for deceit.

"Sean, I didn't feel like cooking…" Claudia looked up with a toss of her hair. "I ordered a pizza for you and the kids."

"I got the last piece." Eddie didn't look up from the football on the TV. If he could look up, he would see Claudia snarling at him and Sean fighting a compulsion to choke the life out of him. His hands shaking out of restrained anger, Sean could only picture beating his brother to an inch of his life for years of annoying disrespect and indifference to his life. He wanted to really kill at times, but another restrained breath and Sean fought off those homicidal urges once again.

"Don't worry about it…" Sean exasperatingly twisted his own neck tiredly. "I got a cheap hamburger on the walk home."

"We got some lasagna left." Claudia continued separating laundry in the form of her kids' clothes from towels and mismatched pillow covers. Sean remembered that lasagna from the night before and bolted through the dining room for the kitchen.

"Oh gosh…" Eddie shook and wavered his head. "I think I ate that too."

Her eyes narrowed angrily, Claudia thought a second about smacking Eddie around herself. A snarled growl from her gritted teeth, she pictured him being shot for one of his shady deals and continued folding laundry. A dishtowel, a mismatched sock, she pulled out several of her teenage daughter's g-strings and looked toward she was placing the girl's clean clothes and noticed something amiss from the pre-sorted clothes.

"Eddie," She looked around. "Did you see a pink bra there a second ago?"

"No." Eddie sipped his drink.

"It was there on top of Lily's blue jeans with her clothes."

"Lily's?" Eddie reacted. "I thought it was one of yours." He pulled the missing bra from his back pocket.

"Sean, I was right!!!" Claudia began screaming. "Eddie's been the one stealing my underwear!" Sean came running from the kitchen angry, hostile and pushed to the brink of insanity. Eddie heard him coming and launched to his feet to protect himself.

"I don't know where she's getting this!" He claimed.

"I threatened Brad O'Keefe because of you!!" Sean confessed with a bit of embarrassed guilt over harassing the neighbor boy. "Eddie, how much more disgusting can you get?!"

"I don't understand the question." Eddie responded as Claudia rolled her eyes offended and disgraced. When she looked again, Sean was grabbing his brother by the collar and belt and was dragging him to the door. Lily was coming in at that moment to open the door for him and watch her Uncle Eddie tossed out of the house. She was not a captivating beauty, but she was an attractive young lady of seventeen with a subdued sexuality about her, unyielding dark green eyes and short red hair cut short at her shoulders. Her fashion-style was currently restricted to Catholic School Girl: a red plaid skirt and vest with a white blouse. Though she had the potential look of the girl she wanted to be, her personality was classic hostile teenager with restrained enmity toward her parents and a mind for coming up with schemes to push the boundaries of her restrictions. Her father tossed her uncle off the front stoop and turned round a bit out of breath to slam the front door to him.

"We have to change the locks again." Claudia replied.

"What good does it do?" Sean groused tiredly annoyed. "He keeps getting back in!" He seemed to notice his daughter for the first time. "Why are you out so late?"

"I was studying at Renee's…"

"Studying?"

"Hanging out…" Lily changed her answer. "Her sister came home from college and was telling us about her co-ed dorm." She delayed a bit thinking about the circumstances of living there. "I think I want to go to that college."

"With what?" Claudia chuckled a bit at her. "We spent your college tuition on the new roof for the house."

"What about the money grandpa was putting into an account for me?" Lily followed her mother to the kitchen in back of the house.

"We had to borrow from that to fix the damage Jimmy and Henry did to the basement." Sean recalled his sons' damage to the waterline that flooded the basement.

"Well…" Lily reacted a bit scared as she rescued a bottle of water from the refrigerator to drink. "What do I have in my college tuition?"

"Uh…." Sean and Claudia looked at each other in nervous apprehension.

"You know, honey…" Sean took his daughter by his side and pulled her lovingly close. "There is nothing wrong with a good community college."

"Community college??!" Lily screeched unable to believe her ears. "What if I got a scholarship?"

"With your grades?" Claudia chuckled a bit as she wiped down the wood counter. By her right side, Jimmy and Henry were innocuously strolling into the house. Jimmy was all of fourteen years of aged with uncombed brown hair.

"You creeps are the fault I don't have a life!" She screeched toward them, turned with a bratty sneer to her face and charged unyielding up the back steps of her house. A second more and a bedroom door slammed.

"What'd we do now?" Jimmy asked a few steps behind the events happening around him.

"Lily's just now discovering that she may not make college." Seam mused over his search for food in the house.


	2. Chapter 2

2

It had started out as a tapping noise at the door and had built up to rapping, gently rapping across the front of the house. Sean ignored it once, calling out the front window of his upstairs bedroom for whoever it was to go away, but whoever… or whatever had annoyed him awake never appeared nor departed his front porch. Claudia thought it was a tree branch scrapping the house, and Sean decided he'd cut all the limbs off the trees that came within three feet of the house. Just as he started to sink back into bed, the sound came back rapping then knocking at the door. If it were his idiot brother, Sean would knock the stuffing out of that cretin. He charged from his bed angry and hostile, ready to take out his hostility upon whatever was doing that noise!

"Oh yeah!" Sean stood in the cold night around his front porch swinging his tennis racket as a defense against crooks. "Come on! Bring it on!" His tensed face and scowling features surveyed his West Brighton neighborhood from the O'Keefes next door over to the Hennessy house next door. The night was dark; there was not a moon out tonight. It was almost sheer darkness beyond his house from the porch onward except for faraway neon lights and the illumination of Manhattan beyond bouncing off the unseen cloud cover above the land. Another grumbling breath and Sean backed into his home again ready to return to bed. His left hand pulled the front door shut behind him as he reentered the front hall of his house. The cold chill of the night had not left his body. In fact, the house seemed even colder than outside as his breath formed in the air inside the house.

"What the…" He reacted a bit more rationally and checked the downstairs thermostat. It read seventy-seven degrees, but it felt like seven below. His finger tapped it once, twice, a third time… Why was the house so cold? He reached to the vent and felt warm air blowing out of it. Noticing his breath forming in the air again, Sean surveyed the house a bit from the TV in the room to the doors to the dining room and back over to the hall to the kitchen. A few steps up the stairs and he was feeling warm again, but his breath was still filling the air.

"Claudia…" He spoke. "Does the house seem a bit cold tonight?" He pressed forward to his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Even as his shadow left the top landing, another shadow had followed him up the staircase. It was as tall as his shadow, but wispier and less defined. It had a thinner basic humanoid outline for a while, but upon reaching the top landing, it melted off the wall and collapsed into a moving cognizant shape on the carpet. A living shadow for an invisible presence, the form tried followed Sean, but instead hesitated before the bedroom door; the tenants inside the master bedroom were still awake and Claudia's voice giggled as Sean indulged her in ardent lovemaking. Regressing into teenage lovers had alienated the form from advancing any further, but there were still others in this house. The shadow undulated without form again, trekking past the open door to the cold porcelain floor of the bathroom. Following the length of the wall, it ambled away from the wall and headed toward the light blue light on the floor from the window breaking the dark blue light of the house. Once covered by the exterior light entering the house, the shadow vanished, becoming a brighter silvery glow in the filtered glow through the window and then emerging on the other side of the hall to follow the other wall. It was encroaching beyond another room, a room with a door that was ajar, easy to push open a bit wider for an invisible astral being of pure thought. The shadow plodded on further unerringly toward the warmth of the teenage girl in the bed.

Her vibrant red hair mussed in a heap around her head, her left arm draped off the bed, Lily slept diagonally over her bed with her head on a corner tip of her pillow and one leg sticking out the bottom of her comforter. She was a deep but active sleeper who tossed and twisted to the tune of her dreams. With the shadow coming closer, she reacted from the cold air around it and suddenly shivered, turned her body around from laying on her chest and stomach and assumed another face down position in the deeper section in the middle of the bed. Her face was serene, her complexion perfect in the subdued darkness, but she lightly gasped as the cold air wafted up from the floor under her covers and caressed her skin. A sensation of vibrant energy entered her soul next, a piercing from one world to another filled her senses and Lily's hand suddenly reacted and gripped a steel rod forming part of her bed's metal headboard. Her voice briefly groaned from the presence entering her body. Her right hand tensed up, but her left hand started gripping tighter. A slight creak came from the metal being distorted; her fingers became augmented instantaneously with incredible strength. This was a powerful force imbuing her life with a new purpose. When Lily gasped, the cold air wafted from her lips and filled the room.

Her eyes opened.

Her eyes had opened to a different personality, a different bearing, a different… person. She rolled over to sit upright in her bed. Her breath formed in the air again and wafted away. Another mist from her lips started forming and was inhaled once more. Lily held her hand aloft to her eyes and she looked it over, extending her fingers once and again and turning it over. She looked at her other hand as well. Palms up, palms down… they were tingling to her. They reached up to her face and cupped her face free of her long red hair before pulling it all backward from her face and taut against her head. Her red locks once suspended around her shoulders now cascaded a bit further down her back. Her hair was a bit longer, a bit more perfect, a bit more… godly. A deep breath filled her lungs and released it. She felt the same yet, different… She wasn't sure what had filled her, but it sure stimulated her body down to the core of her soul. Her left eye intriguingly acknowledged the changes pouring through her essence and she reclined back down to the bed a bit more gracefully than before. Her green-tinted eyes closed upon resting her head on the center of her pillow and she immediately feel asleep once more, this time a bit more immortal than she was before.


	3. Chapter 3

3

"Lily!" Claudia screamed to the upstairs as her sons ate cereal at the kitchen table. "Time to get up!"

Lily opened her eyes and looked to her ceiling. Something about her this morning made her feel as if she was floating. A deep breath from her lungs, a stirring from her arms rising up from her blanket, and she started rising from her bed. She sat up slowly, coveting and experiencing new sensations with every move. She swung her legs out to the floor, her feet settling down to her carpet. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she looked to her hands again. They were steady and unique to her this morning. She felt incredible. Usually she dragged from bed wanting to return back to sleep, but this morning she felt charged, even more alive than she had ever felt. She felt as if she could challenge the world. Her vigor was augmented; her purpose for being was relit. Arching her back a bit, she felt the energies tingling through her soul and body and looked to her reflection in the mirror. Her red hair seemed longer. It also looked perfect. It wasn't mussed a bit from stirring in her sleep. Her jaw dropped at her face and features. She had not only been imbued with new gifts, but whatever had happened to her had made her even more captivating. The fingers of her hand reached up looking for her freckles, the blemishes she once hid with make-up. She might have been cute before, but she was outright hot now. Her eyes bobbed down a bit over her reflection and noticed something else. The overall perfection to her body had extended a bit far as she noticed how much fuller the top of her nightgown had become.

"Oh my god..." She backed off a bit and looked to her chest. It was larger… Not too much larger, but much more obvious. She cupped her bosom lightly in her palms and reacted to her new development. "This was not supposed to happen! What the heck is this?" She looked back at her reflection with nervous tension and stressed worry. "This is not my body, this is Pamela Anderson's body! I can't hide these things!" Her face filled with distress and fear. "All the girls in the world who want bigger boobs, and I have to be the one to get them?!" She looked back and forth from her reflection to her new chest filling out the top of her nightgown. She looked as if she was about to explode out the top of her bodice. Rolling her eyes and briefly pacing, Lily tried thinking about how to handle this development resulting from her new presence. She looked to her reflection and down to her chest jutting from her body.

"Maybe nobody will notice them." She tried to convince herself. "I mean… girls develop at different rates." She looked at her new figure in profile. "My god, I'm Dolly Parton!!!"

"Lily!" Claudia screamed from downstairs again. "Time to get up!" She moved around Sean reading the newspaper over the stove and looked up to the kitchen ceiling to finally hear her daughter moving about the upstairs. There was an unseen act of psychokinesis upstairs as a gesture removed Lily of her sleeping arraignments and summoned one of Lily's school uniforms in its place to her to appear upon her person. Lily tossed her new longer red tresses behind one ear, took a hairbrush from the air flying toward her hand and brushed her hair back before grabbing two socks and picking up her shoes to hasten her steps through the house. A half-minute from her mother's frustrated call, Lily was all dressed and attired in her school uniform just seconds from bed. Her father turned his head up courteously to look upon his little girl in the moment.

"Well, you could just be on time." Claudia placed a bowl in her daughter's usual place at the breakfast table. She looked up a bit and around barely paying attention. Henry had looked up and then snapped to attention. Jimmy had stopped in mid-pose while eating his breakfast, his father had not looked up yet from re-reading the sports pages. Sitting and pulling on her socks in the chair, Lily pulled her shoes on her feet and reacted subtly against her new dimensions. Claudia had set down her daughter's oatmeal and slowly panned up over her daughter's school uniform, the vest was straining against something inside the blouse. Something larger, wider and rounder…

"Oh my god!!!"

Sean put his paper down, and Jimmy and Henry continued staring at Lily as if they did not recognize her. Lily had a spoonful of oatmeal and was lifting it up to her lips. Her whole family was looking at her. What was it? What was it?

"Lily…" Claudia snickered a bit at her daughter's imitation of a playmate centerfold. "Um, is something new?"

"Not really…"

"What do you have in there?!" Her mother forced the question.

"Just me…" Lily reacted as if she did not understand the attention. Well, she did, but she did not want them to know that.

""She's going to explode!" Henry pointed at her straining blouse and vest.

"Okay…" Sean did not want to be a part of this conversation. "Jimmy, Henry… time for us to go."

"But I'm not finished with my…" Jimmy looked at his unfinished breakfast.

"You can finish it later." Sean hurriedly rushed him than to see his daughter looking like a parade balloon.

"Wait…" Henry did not understand the discretion or the nature of what was going on. "How did Lily's boobs get so big?"

"Don't ask, don't tell!" Sean tried fleeing from the lady talk. He made one last look of panicked distaste to his wife and pushed his boys out the back door. Claudia dropped her jaw with a bit of annoyed intrigue and curious maternal disbelief.

"Lily…" Claudia looked at her daughter with the super-model figure. "What have you got in there?"

"Mom," Lily's mind was reacting and processing much faster. Her creativity and intuitive ability were augmented with the rest of her. Her brain was rewired for fourth-dimensional thinking, and she was seeing and discarding all sorts of possible conversations within seconds. "I tried telling you a month ago I was developing a bit more and I needed new bras, but you told me don't be ridiculous. Why are you just now noticing this?"

"What?" Claudia reacted confused. "I don't recall having that conversation."

"You don't recall myself telling you that I was filling out a bit more?" Lily reacted more analytical as well as far more creatively liberal in her deceptive re-direction. "Do you recall me asking about my money for college last night?"

"Yes, but…" Claudia refrained a bit confused. "Wait a second, you were not that big last night when you came home from Renee's house!!"

"No, I just blew up over night." A bit of the old Lily reacted with attitude. Claudia groaned, turned round trying to avoid this fight, and turned round again.

"Lily, what do you have in there?!" She wanted to know the truth!

"It's just me." Lily insisted. "Do I have to pop them out to show you?" She reached up to her vest and popped the top button.

"No!!!" Claudia jumped backward averting her eyes. "Uh, I… I will… Whoa, I think you're even bigger than me…" She paused trying to think while cupping her own bosom and trying to imagine her own swollen to that size. "Uh, I'll take you to my gynecologist. Yep, that's what I'll do. I'll take my daughter the parade balloon to see my doctor."

"Mom…"

"Oh my god…" Claudia could not stop looking away. "Wow! Uh, can you breath okay with those things?"

"Yes…"

"Wow." Claudia snickered a bit. "I'll take you to my…. Whoa, three bra sizes in one night…"

"Mom!" Lily rolled her eyes. "I haven't got that big!"

"You're not looking at them from where I am!!!"


	4. Chapter 4

4

The trip to Doctor MacNichol was a half-hour drive into Manhattan with an hour wait in his waiting room. During that experience, Lily was quite nonchalant about the events going on around her, but Claudia was nervous as if she was embarrassed to be around the incredible exploding daughter. She worried that Lily could explode or if she was possibly on the grounds of discovered a large tumor or two ready to suck the life out of her daughter. Along the way of that ordeal, she watched as one husband with his wife ogled Lily and she tried to cover up her daughter's development with a magazine. One magazine was not enough; it took two. What she could not understand was why Lily was so casually complacent about it. Any other girl in the world who went straight from a B-cup to a D-cup would be freaking out, but Lily was quite taking it all in stride. In her own words, she repeated that she had been developing gradually for the last two months and that her mother had just not been paying attention, but Claudia declared that that was ridiculous. She paid attention to her daughter, and Lily was not, repeat not, packing heat the night before!

After two hours, Dr. MacNichol had to side with Lily. What she observed was a young lady with a very natural development with no signs of deterrents to her health and she suggested that Claudia pay even closer attention to her daughter or else produce proof in the way of photos that Lily had indeed blown up over night. That had Claudia wondering when was the last time she had taken pictures of her daughter. She took Lily to school and dropped her off…

And the real terror began…

Lily was suddenly a very popular student. Guys suddenly took notice of her, and her female classmates at St. Finnian's Catholic School split into three camps. There were the girls who started laughing and cracking jokes around her, those who started spreading rumors that she had just received breast implants and those who truly were her friends and tried to accept her for it, but by the end of the day, they were all merging into one group spreading rumors and jokes. The nuns and faculty were not helpful at all through her ordeal, taking Lily into the restroom for a strip search trying to find whatever she was padding herself with to boost her breast size, but three phone calls to Claudia had put an end to the strip searches. No, Lily was not padding. Yes, she really was that big now, and yes, she had just been to the doctor. Lily meanwhile took it all very much in stride. She weathered the storm of accusations and mocking questions without screaming once even as guys leered and ogled her. Beyond her physical development, she really was much a different person. She did not react sarcastically once to the nuns, she actually seemed to know her geometry for once and she behaved maturely and rationally through the day. Brad O'Keefe, the neighbor boy, had had a childhood infatuation with Lily since they were kids. Their relationship was strained when she became a woman, but when Lily appeared in school with her school uniform having much more to hide, he became that much more obsessed to make her his girlfriend and just possibly… just possibly… see Lily for real… without the clothing. While his hormones were making him do even more crazy things, his mind was simultaneously realizing other things. With the bigger chest size, Lily had changed. She was suddenly taking her classes more seriously. She had not cursed the nuns once for the strip searches or for not defending her in the taunts from her classmates. Lily had handled the day maturely and rationally without getting mad or screaming. That was not like Lily at all. Her attitude like her red hair had always been ruled by her temper. Brad started to wonder: was she the same girl at all he had lived next door to all his life?

"Hey, Lily…" He rushed to catch up with her to walk her from school. "How you doing?"

"Fine, Brad…" Lily looked to him and pulled her books closer and tighter in her arms.

"You know who I am…." He looked her over.

"Of course…" Lily treaded onward to her home down the block. "We've been friends since kindergarten."

"Yeah…" He dashed around to her left side where his eyes could gravitate toward the size of her augmented physical dimensions. She seemed in a reflective mood despite her harrowing day. Brad could not stop smiling or grimacing as he stayed in step with her. "Um… do you recall my birthday last year and you buried my face into my strawberry cake?"

"It was chocolate, Brad." Lily looked at him. "What about it?"

"Nothing…" Brad ogled her once and again. "I wasn't sure if you remembered… Oh…" He tried to test her identity again. "Uh, I've got a weird middle name, huh? Eugene, huh. So embarrassing…."

"Your middle name is Herschel, Brad." Lily looked at him as she pulled a lock of hair out of her face.

"Herschel, you remembered…." He was coming up on his house. "You know me so well. Hey, remember when your parents took me with you on that car trip to Disneyland?"

"My eyes are up here, Brad." Lily tired of his ogling and stolen glances and left Brad at his front stoop and continued onward to her house alone. "And we took you to Carlsbad Caverns and Coney Island. I've never even been to Disneyland." Her parents were in the middle of a deep-seated confrontation. It didn't sound like a fight; they weren't yelling. It sounded like a very heated discussion, but the second she entered the house, her father clammed up and stopped talking. Her mother did the same.

"I'm home…" Lily stood in the foyer of the house and looked around the room to them and back. "Anything up?"

"Nope, everything's fine." Her father couldn't look at her without seeing her increased bust size. He just pretended to notice the crack in the ceiling.

"Okay…" Lily looked at them and rolled her eyes to the dining room, her feet carrying her forward to the kitchen beyond it for a snack. Sean looked at her back then back to his wife. They shared silent looks and waited for Lily to leave the room. The second the kitchen door swung shut, Sean picked up the same discussion.

"Homemade boob job!" He suggested another explanation for his girl's development. "She gets like two balloons in the mail, cuts herself open…"

"She screams at the sight of blood." Claudia dismissed his twenty-seventh crazy idea. "She's not going to give herself a homemade boob job." She paced back and forth again. "Sean, there is nothing in the world that would make her get that big overnight. I'll tell you again. The doctor found no evidence of cancer, plastic surgery or inflammation."

"How about stung by a bee?" Sean came up with another one. "Recall when she was five and her face swelled all up from getting stung."

"It's not a bee sting either!" Claudia paced round a bit fearing she'd wake up in the morning with her daughter even bigger or maybe even taller! "I do know one thing." She pointed her finger to Sean to make her point. "Her school called me seven times about the size of her chest blowing up so now I know this stuff about her having been going through it for the last month is a load of crap! That girl did something to herself…" She paused trying to think. "And I'll be damned if I can figure it out!!!"

A slice of cheese in two slices of bread in her hand to nibble on, Lily ascended the back staircase to her bedroom with her schoolbooks and came upon her younger brother Henry watching her come up before him. His eyes dropped to her chest and up again.

"I'm surprised you can make up the stairs with those extra packages." He grimaced upon teasing her.

"Be careful heading down…" Lily rolled her eyes and continued on her way. Behind her, Henry had started down on his own way, but Lily gestured with her hand and he missed a step or something, tumbling off the middle landing and rolling down into the kitchen without injury. Landing on his shoulder, he looked back up the stairway. If Lily had been closer to him, he would have sworn that she'd pushed him.

In her room, Lily dropped her books on to her bed and undid her school vest, pulling it off and tossing it aside. With that off, she arched her shoulders back, her heightened bosom pressing forward against her white shirt as she stretched her back. She tilted her head back relieved to be home, wondering when her mystically augmented chest might start popping buttons, and reached to rub her own neck when she sensed a flash in her room. Where did that come from? She regained normal posture and looked around the room, her senses touching off on the room and everything around her. She immediately tramped around her bed to the window on the other side of the room and looked across the alley to the O'Keefe's house. Brad was in his room across the way with a camera!

"Brad!!!" She screeched and reached to the air behind her, tossing a spell upon him over catching the photo of her from across alley. Brad could only grin excitedly at the idea of the photo he got, but he'd never get to see it. His camera burst open and the film exposed itself, erasing all the photos he had taken in the last week. How the heck had that happened?! He looked up to Lily as her blinds dropped to obscure him from stealing any more images of her. A deep disgusting groan from her lips, Lily rolled her eyes around the room and pulled her fingers back through her crimson locks.

"I so need some privacy…" She gasped out loud to herself.


	5. Chapter 5

5

The Red Boot Pub had been built in 1898 and it had weathered several years of Irish-Catholic feuds through the ages, but in the modern year, it was in larger competition with the larger conglomerate run bars and taverns. Sean loved this place. His past was in this place from when he waited for his grandfather from the front stoop to his first illegal beer with a fake ID. His memories were in the location and he kept it going largely for that reason.

"Hey, Sean…" Eddie wandered into the Red Boot Pub a little late. Sean was wiping down the counter after collecting a few glasses. The Red Boot was their favorite local pub despite the more expensive ones in the area. They had purchased it to save it and to run it, but neither of them had any ideas to promote it. If Sean was the heart of the Irish-style pub, then Eddie was the black spot over it. Sean could possible make a go of the place of his brother wasn't dragging it down.

"Sean…" Eddie took a place at the bar and looked around to the five guys around drinking in the place. "I'm going to let you apologize for throwing me out of your house."

"I'm not apologizing." Sean looked at him. "You've been stealing my wife's underwear. That's disgusting."

"I'm telling you, Sean…" Eddie cocked his head a bit. "You don't apologize, I'm not coming by your house again."

"Fine with me…"

"I mean it, Sean…" Eddie tried to make an ultimatum. "You kick me out of your house, you'll only see me here."

"Sounds great…"

"Are you sure you want to do this, Sean?" Eddie looked back at him. "I mean… I'm your brother."

"Eddie…" Sean beamed and embraced his brother across the bar. "Claudia's having the locks changed again…"

"Why are you letting her do that?" Eddie reacted. "That's your house!"

Sean rolled his eyes annoyingly and turned to the shelves to check his stock. Behind him, he heard the bell on door to the pub ring and he turned excited to have another customer. His spirits dropped to see it was just his daughter and her friends, the two shapes that entered the room before her from the front of her black sweater. He pretended to be distracted by a bottle of brandy, but Eddie was much less subtle. He looked to his niece briefly then spun around fascinated. What the heck had happened to her?! She looked as if she should be in a comic book wearing a star-spangled bustier and waving a golden lasso!

"Lily… wow, what happened to you?'" His eyes gravitated to her unusual accoutrements. "Where'd Paris and Nicole come from?"

"What?" Lily did not seem to get his reference.

"The Doublemint Twins? The Madonnas? Mary Kate and Ashley?"

"Eddie, stop that!" Sean swatted his brother with the same towel he was using on the bar. He groaned annoyingly and tried to look his daughter in the eye. "What's up, Lily?"

"Oh, nothing much…" Lily held on the edge of the counter and pulled herself up to it as if she were saving herself from falling. Her inexplicable boob-job jutted over the counter as she drew near. "I just wanted to…" She took a deep breath and her father became flustered.

"I can't stop looking at those things!" Sean became flustered and excused himself to the storeroom until his own daughter was gone. It wasn't that he was thinking indecent thoughts or anything, but he could not stand being reminded even much so that she was already a woman. That seemed to be what Lily wanted… to drive him from the room for a minute. She spun round and leaned backward against the bar slumping again.

"Uncle Eddie…" She started. "Uncle Eddie, my eyes are up here."

"Yeah…" Eddie looked into her eyes. "What's the dilly, Miss Dolly?"

"Uncle Eddie…" Lily leaned forward to the counter. "I'd like to place a bet on a horse, but I'm underage to gamble." She looked back to see if her father was watching as she produced the racetrack projections from the newspaper. "I've got $150 to place on Flying Dutchman and $50 on Black Lightning in the second race. If I win both races, I should get back $15,000 back. Okay?"

"Wow…" He could not stop staring at just how far she had matured since he had last seen her. "You've really filled out… uh, up!"

"Uncle Eddie!"

"What?" Eddie looked at her. "You're crazy. Flying Dutchman is forty-to-one, and Lightning hasn't won a race in since whatever."

"Whatever…" Lily rolled her eyes and pulled a folded over wad of bills from her pocket. "Those are the horses I want. Got it?"

"Those are the horses you'll get…" He took her bet. "Happy losing…" He took her money and started counting it.

"Oh, I'm feeling lucky…" Lily looked back to the newspaper to acknowledge which names were jumping out to her now clairvoyant senses. She was feeling more than lucky; she was feeling psychic. She stepped toward the restrooms and turned her head to call to her father. "Dad, I got to go. I've got to go bra-shopping again!"

"I didn't need to hear that!!!" He yelled back. Lily just cackled a bit and turned with a brief jiggle out the door and a skip down the sidewalk. In the bar, Eddie just mused silently, bobbing his head and thinking about how much money the neighbor boys would pay for pictures of his niece in a bikini. Of course, he'd have to photo-shop them.

"Eddie, I don't know what I'm going to do." Sean wandered out from the storeroom. "My daughter's suddenly got an x-rated body, and I can't look at her. I think God's getting even with me for all the dirty magazines I ever looked at."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Eddie palmed Lily's cash in his hand. "Uh, your daughter wants me to place a bet for her."

"What?!" Sean nearly dropped the glass he started to clean; his bar patrons looked up to him. "Is she crazy?!" He thought it over a second. "I've got an idea. Go ahead and place her bet. It'll be good punishment when she loses all her money!"

"Oh, she's going to lose her money." Eddie nodded and bobbed his head in agreement. "Trust me, I've lost a lot of money on the horse races. She'd have to be psychic to think she had a sure thing."

At the corner outside the drugstore, Lily picked up a copy of the morning paper and scanned the horse races for the next day for more names lifting off the page for her. There were a few good ones… Rusty Nail in the third race, Split Lightning in the fifth and Golden Nugget in the eighth. She then turned the page and checked the stock pages as even more facts and figures jumped to her senses. She was going to be very rich if she played these numbers and cents right. She'd never have to worry about money again, but keeping her betting and stock-playing a secret was going to be hard. Her independence was important, her privacy a must and her new begotten powers a gift from the gods. She'd also need to figure out how to place her own bets; going through Uncle Eddie was not exactly safe. Tucking a lock of her red hair behind her ear, she inserted her newspaper into her purse under her arm and continued across the street to meet her friends and hope they were still friendly with her since her new endowment. The boys at school loved her, but several of her closest friends became threatened by her. She gazed down a bit annoyed at her new figure and groaned under breath. With them, she could control every guy whose brain was in his pants, but she also lost a lot of her best friends.

As she rounded the corner, Lily looked across the street to the large warehouse. She had seen it several times on her way to school. Constructed of brick and quarried sandstone, it was a three-story tall former distribution warehouse set back a hundred feet from the street behind a tall chain-link fence. It had been empty for years. She looked over the ground floor windows covered in dirt and grime, a few brief panes shattered or missing, and up to the deserted empty windows. Checking the street, Lily hastened across to check it out closer and arrived at the front gate. It was chained and padlocked shut, but a brief look at it and the lock snapped open, and the chain unraveled itself, spilling into a chiming piles of links on the concrete.

Unlatching the gate, Lily slipped on to the property and secured the gate again behind her. Her feet briskly jaunting her across, she stepped into the shadow of the warehouse. It was much higher and colder closer up as she trespassed over weeds sticking through the cracks in the parking lot, strewn and flattened beer cans and shattered beer bottles. The place seemed to attract litter for being closed, but the place seemed intact. In fact, it seemed built like a fortress. The one door she tried seemed rock solid, built to deter break-ins. The first floor windows were five feet off the ground and impenetrable. Even a trapeze artist could not get in that way. A chain link fence on top of a hill overlooking the loading docks lined the back of the property. The area was desolate, the sounds from Bayonne Bridge and the bay a few blocks away. The structure seemed haunted, it was definitely lonely and it surely instilled privacy. Lily turned her head over her left shoulder as one of the loading dock doors groaned, creaked a bit and rolled itself up with the presence of a huge mouth opening wide to swallow her up. Her mind working, Lily glanced inside to complete darkness, deserted and abandoned equipment and desolate shadows lurking under a high ceiling supported by white brick pillars. She levitated up off the ground and stepped in through the loading bay, her head cocking to the sound of the wind blowing through the third floor. Her eyes perusing the interior from the dirty windows to the far doors removed from their panes and propped against the wall, she turned round on her heel scraping the dust from the floor. This place had been empty for a long time.

"This could work…"


	6. Chapter 6

6

Another day, another dollar, and Sean was back at the Red Boot pumping drinks and wondering when the pub was ever going to get out of the red. It was a good crowd right now with the bachelor's party yelling and screaming, but best of all, they were spilling their drinks. It was going to be a big mess to clean up, but Sean was tallying every drink. Nearly routine, Eddie wandered in just before twelve noon and sauntered behind the bar for a bottle of beer.

"Nice of you to finally show up, Eddie." He looked to his brother complacently and non-committally acknowledging him.

"Yeah, yeah, Sean…" Eddie sat at the counter. "Your daughter… her horses won."

"What?" Sean took his attention off the tap as he spilled a bit. Catching himself, he poured off the excess foam and passed over the ale to the customer sitting at the counter who had ordered it. "She won?"

"Both times…." Eddie revealed the winning betting stub. "In all, she made $16, 763. 08."

"She got lucky!" Sean could not believe it. "I can't believe it." He turned round trying to think. "You know what's worse. She's either going to lose it all on another bet or waste it shopping." He wiped down the bar to look busy. "Well, I'm not going to let her do it. I'm going to pick up that money and put it in a savings account for her.

"You're a really good father, you know that."

"Watch the bar, will you?" Sean took the betting slip and looked it over. He was so tempted to take and pocket it; he could get that electric guitar from the pawn shop and maybe even take his wife out for a nice night out on the town, but how would he explain spending his little girl's money. Sure, she had been a problem in the past, but in the last few days, she had really been improving herself. Sister Helen at the school had said Lily's grades had improved, her attitude had changed for the better and she was for once not fighting with her brothers. Maybe that inexplicable boob job had changed her for the better. Sean headed to the first off-track betting place he could, but they wouldn't pay it. They didn't pay off for those amounts. He'd have to go to the betting offices at Willow Brook Park. That meant an arduous bus ride with the more colorful side of humanity. Along the way, the urge to just keep the money just continued plying him, but then he'd think of his little girl at eight years old when she held on to his hand along the sidewalk and his heart melted. Daddy's little girl…

At Willow Brook Park, he got in line with the rest of the reprobates. It was a short line; not many people won for two horses in the same day. There was one for eight hundred dollars, one for five hundred, another for seven hundred… Finally, Sean made it to the window and fished through his front pocket for the high-paying ticket.

"Hi…" Sean beamed to the ticket lady. He scowled trying to find the ticket. "My daughter won some money…" He found the ticket and placed it down before sliding it over to the paymaster. "She won big."

"Congratulations…" The woman sitting in the booth took the ticket and typed its number in for a check of the races. She typed a few other keys. "According to this, this amount has already been paid out through the other stub."

"What?!" Sean freaked, his eyes glaring and his voice rising. "When?"

"Just now…" The female paymaster checked which window had paid. "At Window Five…"

Sean jumped back and looked at window five. There was a fat guy with a mustache there, but heading out was a taller brunette woman wearing dark eyeglasses and a black hooded jacket. She looked back at Sean and started walking faster.

"That's not my daughter!!!" Sean freaked and bolted after her. He had to dodge around the felt ropes surrounding him and weave past others in his way, but he was not letting this woman rip off his daughter while he couldn't do it. The strange woman started for the entrance and noticed a security guard turn to look at her.

"She stole my daughter's money!" Sean screamed and the brunette woman made a dash in the other direction. She took a running sprint at another security guard, hit the floor and slid under his legs before vaulting to her feet again. With Sean and three men in uniforms after her, she dodged and veered around other gamblers and racetrack officials with the sleek style and timing of a Japanese samurai. When a tall burly guard grabbed her coming around the corner, she somehow somersaulted within his arms, caught his head in her legs and flipped him to his back with little effort. She was turning out to be a little powerhouse. From her back, she grabbed her purse with the cash, leapt to her feet from her back and took off running again. Behind her, security guards were radioing ahead for back up. Sean raced with them trying to catch up with the brunette bandit. The woman bolted for the balcony near the back entrance and jumped over the edge. When Sean looked over it, his quarry landed in a pose and looked up at him. Looking up through her dark glasses, she beamed her wide grin and waved her fingers at him to say goodbye. She then dashed out of the building leaving behind Sean and five security guards fighting to catch their breath.

"What am I going to tell my daughter?" Sean gritted his teeth and frustratedly pulled his hair back. This was so going to break her heart to win all this money and then lose it. Maybe Claudia would break the bad news, or not. All she could do was give him advice.

"Sean, just tell her the truth." Claudia told him.

"What truth?!" Sean was beside himself in guilt and upset frustration as he paced his living room. "That she got ripped off by a female Ninja who flipped over a two-hundred pound security guard? I don't even believe it!"

"Did that really happen?"

"Yes…" Sean insisted. "Claudia, this woman jumped down thirty feet and took off without a scratch!"

"Wow…" Claudia noticed movement outside the house as the proverbial daughter let herself into the house. In the outside world, Lily was still going through angst due to the sudden and abrupt change in her appearance with guys putting moves on her and wanting to go all the way with her into sexual intercourse, as if having large breasts made her that much of a sexual being. If anything, the forces that had altered her had made her much more rational, even more logical, maybe even more enlightened and gave her peace with the world along with the other… powers she had inherited.

"Dad…" Lily set aside her schoolbooks on to the back of the sofa and briefly held her bosom as she leaned back again. "Did you get my money from my bet?"

"You know I know about it?" Sean wondered about that.

"Uncle Eddie told me." Lily folded her arms before her and settled her weight to her left leg. She tilted her head back. Sean didn't know how to react. Should he be angry for her gambling, or sympathetic to her loss of her money?

"Sean…" Claudia groaned to him through her teeth. "Tell her…"

"Uh, yeah…" Sean was finally talking to her since she had blown up. "Lily, honey… I've got something to tell you." He looked at her face.

"My horse won, I know." Her face was shining excitedly. "Where's my money? Did you get it in cash or do I get a check? Not that it matters, but I've got big plans for it!"

"You do?" Sean was so going to hate this. He just could not break her heart. When did his little girl, well, not so little girl, ever win a lot of money on her own. "Well, honey," He tried thinking about what he was going to say. He looked to Claudia watching him and back to his daughter. "Princess, it seems you did win, but…."

"Sean…" Claudia verbally prodded him.

"Someone else got your money." Sean finally said it. "She somehow had an extra stub."

Lily just starred at him as if she didn't believe him or didn't want to believe him. She looked to her father, toward her mother and then back to her father. They were waiting for the explosion.

"What?" She disbelievingly tucked her long red hair behind her left ear.

"I went to get it for you…" Sean was telling the truth as he showed her the slip. "But someone else got there before me. It was a woman with long dark hair also claiming to be Lily Finnerty. I'm so sorry, baby."

"Someone else got my money?" Lily said it as if she was trying to understand it.

"We're so sorry, honey…" Claudia tried to console her. "Look, we'll pay you back the original $200 you lost…"

"We will??" Sean didn't recall that part.

"We will!" Claudia was insistent about it.

"How can something like this happen?" Lily looked away upset. "Did you like… tell the police?"

"Well, honey…" Sean continued to try and be supportive. "They've got much bigger things to deal with."

"Yeah…" Lily retook her books from the sofa, her feelings were distraught and her hopes dashed. "Well, I can deal with it. I mean, it's not like Uncle Eddie ripped me off himself." She turned on her heel and ambled slowly over to the staircase up to her room with one hand tugging at her right bra strap. Sean started to think. Eddie had placed the bet. How difficult would it be for him to get a lady friend to claim Lily's money?

"Eddie…" Sean thought about it.

"Eddie!" Claudia already believed what her husband was thinking. Over their heads, Lily continued onward to her room and opened and closed her door. Her bed was a mess. The top blanket had been pulled up to hide something under it she had dropped off earlier in the day. She pulled it back to reveal a black jacket with a hood draped over her purse filled with wads of fifty-dollar bills barely covered by a brunette wig. She took one wad of bills and thumbed through it.

"Like shooting fish in a barrel." Her devious mind admired herself for her little act. Now that she had figured out how to physically masquerade as an adult, she checked the sports pages for another premonition of tomorrow's horse races to make another bet on her own time.


	7. Chapter 7

7

"Hey, what's up, guys…" Eddie had entered the house and went straight to the kitchen in back. Claudia reacted silently annoyed, and Sean helped her by loading the dishwasher with the dirty dishes from dinner. Ten-year-old Henry finished gnawing at his last pork chop and tossed the bone into the trash. Even Jimmy responded nervously by rushing through the rest of his dinner and bolting through the room before the fight started. Henry being Henry meanwhile had to jab the proverbial beehive by turning to his uncle and alighting to the crime of which his uncle was being accused.

"Hey, Uncle Eddie…" Henry grimaced mockingly. "You don't mind if I start locking up my piggy bank, do you?"

"No…" Eddie had taken a can of beer from his brother's refrigerator and opened it. He watched Henry rushing up the back stairs and turned to his brother. "Cute kid…" He sipped the beer. "So, Sean, I dropped off the day's receipts for the pub at the bank. You can say, thank you, now…"

"Did they actually get there, Eddie?" Sean winced holding back his anger.

"Yes, they actually got there." The shady brother felt the hostility toward him but didn't understand it. He sipped his beer and noticed the pork chops left in the pan at the table. He set aside his beer to take one and pull the bone off. "So…" He bit into the meat. "What'd Lily do when you put her money in the bank?"

"Funny story, Eddie…" Sean turned round restraining his anger but willing to let it out. "I never got her money!! Somebody ripped her off when I went to get it!!!"

"Well…" Eddie seemed legitimately taken aback. "How the hell did you let that happen?!"

"Get off it, Eddie!!!" Claudia turned round unable to hold her hostility in any more. "You have done a lot of disgusting things around here, but sending that woman to rip Lily off?!!! Even I can't believe you'd sink that far!"

"Is that what this is about?!" Eddie stopped eating the chop for a second. "You think I ripped her off?!!!"

"She had two claim tickets, Eddie!!!" Sean pointed out screaming and upset as he backed his brother into the dining room. "Two! You gave me one, and…"

"Gave the other to Lily!!!" Eddie claimed trying to avoid this fight. "Sean, I'm your brother! What kind of person do you think I am?!!"

"You took my kids to an illegal chop shop!!!" Sean recalled the worse.

"You used our house to film porn videos while we were on vacation!!!" Claudia recalled far worse. "And faked your death to get out of a relationship!"

"Hey, we always fixed anything we broke." Eddie pointed out his efforts to hide his misdeeds. Claudia and Sean looked at each other in disbelief.

"Sean," Eddie continued to try to defend himself. "I'm telling you, I gave Lily the other ticket!"

"Really??!!" Sean snarled still wanting to slam his brother into the wall. "Lily, come down here!" He crossed the living room and called up the stairs.

"What did I do now?" The voice of the unseen daughter called back from the upstairs floor.

"Nothing, Lily…" Claudia stepped on to the bottom landing of the staircase heading up from the front hall foyer of their two-story frame house. "Just come down here…." There was a muffled creak from the upstairs bedroom, scuffling noises across the top floor and Lily's feet started down the stairs. She was wearing shorts and a tank top.

"Yes…" She reacted tiredly complacent, but when she leaned over the railing, her ample cleavage started spilling forward and her mother quickly reminded her not to do that. The newly busty redhead reared back and pulled her top up higher.

"Lily, did Eddie give you the other stub to claim the money from your bet?" Sean asked the question.

"When???" The girl reacted as though she had no knowledge of it.

"Lily, girl…" Eddie reacted with nervous tension and loitered on the floor below his daughter near the top of the staircase. "This is my reputation here. I gave you… you, my only niece, the other stub for your bet. Tell your parents I gave it to you."

"Uncle Eddie," Lily pulled her long red tresses to one side as she posed on the steps. "Where did you leave it?"

"I gave it to you!!!" Eddie was adamant. "Come on…" He turned to Sean. "If I had suddenly had over fifteen hundred dollars, do you think I'd still be driving that electrical embarrassment out at the curb." Sean was trying to think.

"Sean," Claudia was starting to have her doubts. "Eddie may be a creep, but… I'm not sure he had the money stolen."

"Freaking crap!!!" Sean turned round still holding on to his anger and tearing at his skull. "You're right! God…. Eddie, if only you wasn't always so shady!!!"

"When am I ever shady?" Eddie took offense. "Where are you getting this?"

The phone rang and Claudia went to answer it.

"I'm in Germany buying furniture." Eddie reacted to it in case it was one of his contacts. Claudia just rolled her eyes and turned away from him. It was her friend Dorothy from the PTA at Lily's school asking about a bake sale. Sean could only roll his gaze back to the questionable and possibly unethical activities of his brother. This was the house that Lily lived in. Between her parents, her opportunistic uncle, her own brothers taxing her patience and now Brad across the alley watching her from across the way, she need some solitude. She wanted a place where she was not surrounded by this madness. Her feet carried her down the front staircase and down the front hall toward the dining room, but in between, she stopped off at the cellar door and headed down the second flight of stairs looking for old clothing she had taken to store down there. Surrounded by bare beams and cobweb-covered rafters, she turned at her father's band set and her mother's old treadmill. She had only used it for a few days then it came down to the cellar along with all the old baby furniture, Jimmy's forgotten trampoline and even Henry's old baby toys. Nowadays, spiders and moths lied in the crevices nooks and crannies. Rolling an old Big Wheel out of the way, Lily stumbled over weights from her father's bodybuilding set and realized her mother had reorganized the basement at some point. If she wanted her old sweatshirts to hide her large bust, she was going to have to work for them. That meant wheeling the ping-pong table out of the way and stacking her father's weights from the floor to under the stairs. In her fingers now, they were very easy to handle. They were too awkward to stack and lift at once, but she could toss them from her left hand to her right hand as if they were china plates. No effort for a girl whose muscular tissue was heightened by mystical energy. When Lily started to move the cast iron bars of the weightlifting set, she had another thought and casually tilted her head back to look over her shoulder. The door up top had drifted partially closed; no one was watching her. She had privacy; she was alone to do what she wanted. She knew she could levitate, she knew she could mentally move things, but she had done so very little with her heightened physical strength. Her mind wondering what she could do, she took one of the iron bars, took another look behind her and looked back as she clenched the bar aloft in her fingers and started bending it!

"Ohhhh yeah…." She loved it! "This is so cool!!!" She bent the other end in another direction. As long as she was holding the other end, she could bend and taper it in another direction. She could actually hear it creaking and bending like Superman did on TV, turning it from a six-foot long bare barbell into a heavy cast iron bent and mangled paperweight. Her breath racing excitedly, her excitement over her feat of strength swelling to a pitch, she continued cheering herself on with her new powers.

"Oh yeah…" She grinned ear to ear, her voice giggling excitedly at what she was able to do with these new powers within her. "I can't believe I can do this!!!!" She squealed silently delighted to herself.

"Lily, what are you doing down there?" Her mother called to her. Had she heard her?

"Nothing!!!" Lily reacted clandestinely. She dropped the bent bar into a cardboard barrel and covered the top over with a stack of old blankets. She hopped up once to grab her box of sweatshirts and then dashed up the cellar stairs once more to escape back to her room.


	8. Chapter 8

8

It was a shame that on days she did not have college classes that she had to carry out the chores her kids did not do. Lily was actually and surprisingly becoming quite self-sufficient, but neither Jimmy nor Henry ever picked up their dirty clothes or laundry. Lily was actually doing her own laundry last night, throwing other laundry in the washer to fill out the load when she wanted her old sweats washed. Henry meanwhile had used three towels and had left them on the floor from the bathroom to his bedroom. Claudia had started the laundry, but now she had bed sheets to do. She had stripped and taken care of Jimmy and Henry's beds, and skipping her own to do another day, she headed for her daughter's room. Her foot tapped open the door and she advanced welcomed by pop stars on posters and a mild scattering of stuffed animals left behind from childhood. More interested in the bed, Claudia took one pillow then the other, pulling off the pillowcases and tossing the pillows in the big chair in the corner. She then removed the duvet covering the bed, pulling it back to the blanket and sheets. In all, this job took about ten to twelve minutes. She sprayed a scented Lysol substitute over the mattress to freshen it then turned to pick another fresher set of sheets to replace them. The fitted sheet went first, then the top sheet, but Claudia could only do one side at a time. She got the right side near the door then wandered around to the left side of the bed by the window. During these chores, she was usually reviewing her college lessons in her head, but on this occasion, she was distracted. On the left side of the bed, her eyes were suddenly gravitated by the sight of a strange bend in Lily's metal headboard. It was cast iron, five metal rods from a circle supporting the headboard from the base holding the box springs to the top support beam, but only one of them was not quite so straight. She had never noticed that before! It was bent and twisted out of alignment. The confused mother in Claudia felt her curiosity piqued. She tried to bend it back, but whatever had bent it was many times stronger than her. She sat looking it, placing her own hand neatly into the shape of it. It looked and felt as if a very powerful person had bent it!

"Claudia?" Sean's voice resonated from the downstairs.

"Up here…" Claudia called down to him. She rose up from the bed smoothing out the wrinkles she had placed in the sheets while sitting on the bed. When she came around the bed, Sean had trotted up the stairway and was standing in the doorway of his daughter's room decorated in modern female teenager. He looked at his sexy wife in her t-shirt and shorts and beamed like a young kid again.

"Oh, is my sexy chambermaid doing the housekeeping?" He engaged in a blend of role-making and romantic banter with his wife. "Maybe I ought to come home early more often…" His hands pulled her closer from around the waist, and he kissed her neck. Claudia just giggled at his goofy romantics and took a new blanket to fix her daughter's bed.

"What are you doing here?" She asked her husband.

"It was a bit slow." Sean helped her a bit with the blanket. "I left Eddie in charge." He paused a bit. "Hope I don't regret it."

"Hope we don't regret it…" Claudia shared his disdain for Eddie. Sean helped her pull the blanket up and tuck it under the mattress.

"That Brad O'Keefe is getting weirder and weirder!" Sean looked around his daughter's room as he made conversation. "He came by the Red Boot this morning and was asking me all these crazy questions about Lily."

"What kind of questions?" Claudia had pulled back Lily's duvet and was using her hand to press out the wrinkles.

"Like where she was born, if there was anything unusual about her birth and whether she was adopted?" Sean made the same kind of confused and perplexed face he had made as Brad was questioning him. "I mean, where is he getting this stuff?"

"Well," Claudia moved around the bed toward her husband. "Brad has always been a little different." She recalled his preference and passion for all things scientific and science fiction.

"Yeah," Sean grimaced tiredly. "But if he's this weird, I don't want him hanging round Lily any more."

"Uh-huh…." Claudia paused before lifting her basket of bed sheets. "Speaking of weird, Sean, have you noticed this?" She set aside the basket of bed sheets and directed him to the twisted rod. "What would cause that?"

"Well, it's…" Sean tried bending it back, but he couldn't do it. The bed headboard was made from tempered steel; it was not meant to be bent. "What the!! How could… Damn! How the freaking heck did she do that?"

"That's what I was thinking!" Claudia exasperatingly confessed. "It looks as if she bent it with her bare hands!"

"Bent it with her bare hands??" Sean scoffed at that. "Claudia, she's not the Hulk!"

"Then what do you think caused it Sean?"

"Well…" Sean looked at it, tried bending it himself, grunted a bit and noticed his hand barely felt in the curve that formed when it was bent. It had to be bent by someone with small hands… like Lily… "Maybe, she… kicked it?"

"Kicked it? Kicked it??" Claudia scoffed at that. "Sean… That is bent! That is bent by someone with hands my size. Someone like with hands like Lily!"

"What do you want me to say?" Sean retaliated back in this strong discussion in his daughter's bedroom. "Do you want me to say Lily bent it? That's crazy! It's just…. Bent a bit…" Claudia looked at him, gasped a moment and turned round.

"Sean," Claudia headed down the back stairs to the kitchen ready to start the bed sheets. "Haven't you noticed that Lily's been a bit different the last few days? She's not quite so…." She struggled for the right word. "Abrasive?""

"No, I'd say she's not quite so…." Sean also struggled for the right word. "Bratty."

"Exactly!!" Claudia was glad to be in sync with him over the same subject. "She has been much better behaved since…. Since the night of her mysterious boob-job! You know…" Claudia reacted as though she had solved a mystery. "I don't think she's our daughter. I think she's possessed!"

Sean turned around from taking a beer from the refrigerator. He looked at her lost from that line of reasoning.

"Okay, that's just asinine." Claudia rejected that idea herself. "I mean, you ever read that that story about the two look-alikes who exchanged others lives? I mean, what if… our Lily found a girl that looked just like her… except with a bigger chest and they switched places. We got the nice Lily, and our Lily is now living a life of wealth and leisure somewhere else!!!"

"And the nice Lily just happens to bench press ten tons; that's brilliant, Nancy Drew!!!" Sean mocked her stream of deduction. He stopped mugging and had another insight. "Wait a second…. That kind of fits in with what Brad was leading up to…" He started finally seeing the pattern the O'Keefe kid tried to tell him about.

"Exactly!!!" Claudia started realizing how smart she really was. "We got someone else's daughter!"

"I say we enjoy it while we can before the real Lily gets back!!!" Sean sipped his beer as his eldest son Jimmy came through the back door into the kitchen. He dropped his backpack of schoolbooks on the floor and wandered over the refrigerator for a drink. Claudia came up behind him.

"Jimmy," She wandered up to him and braced against the counter island as Sean sipped his beer. "Have you noticed anything weird about your sister?"

"You mean besides her new 40DD?" Jimmy took a can of soda to sip from the refrigerator.

"Besides that…"

"Well…." Jimmy also took a piece of chicken left over from take-out a few days ago. "She aced her history test today in school. Sister Helen accused her of cheating and forced her to take it again under observation." Jimmy paused for a sip of soda. "And she aced it… again!" Claudia pounded the counter and turned to Sean convinced.

"That is not our daughter!" She declared out loud. Lily was just not that a model student.

"But two Lilys…." Sean still struggled with the idea. He drifted over to the kitchen table and sat down sipping his beer. Jimmy looked at his mother spinning around to the washing machine with a flourish. She had just solved a family mystery on mere deduction and was quite proud of herself but a bit spooked of any girl who could bend cast iron steel.

"What's this about?" Jimmy asked.

"Your mother doesn't think we've got the right Lily." Sean paused with his beer and gestured with it. "She thinks she's an imposter."

"Oh, it's Lily alright…" Jimmy rolled his eyes and started to turn away. Claudia looked up at his remark and dropped a sheet from the dryer. Sean looked back.

"Jimmy, Jimmy…" Claudia raced around the counter in the center of the kitchen and tugged him back into the room. "Wait, what do you mean, it's Lily."

"Yeah, how can you tell?" Sean asked him.

"Because Lily has that tattoo on her back and it's still there!" Jimmy answered and headed on his way. Claudia lightly pounded her head for not thinking of that. Forget the imposter theory, the possessed theory was actually stating to sound credible. She groaned at herself and sat down across from Sean. He tipped back his beer and finished it off. Claudia pushed her hair together on her head out of frustration.

"What is going on with that girl?" She mumbled.

"By the way…" Sean thought out loud. "Where is that girl?"

The local West Brighton Business Auction on Long Island met about twice a year to auction off real estate captured in police drug raids and stores that had gone out of business. These auctions usually ran about two hours but were open to the public. It was a good place to acquire cheap real estate to turn over at a profit. Not a lot of people turned up for these things. The properties they tried to get rid of were usually derelict buildings, vacant lots or ruined stores in crime and drug-ridden neighborhoods.

"We are next once again trying to audition off parcel thirty-seven, the old Moseby Street warehouse." The auctioneer looked across the room. It was not a full house, but a few people appeared here looking for nearly decent pieces of property to purchase. "This location has been sitting empty for twenty years, and is on a worthy piece of real estate eight blocks from Richmond Street. The place is in a difficult neighborhood, but the building is sound enough to be restored. It rests upon an acre and a half of commercial property with a small but decent loading area. The old warehouse was built in 1888 and is still partially to code. Of course, we are also required to mention the…" He forced a small laugh. "Alleged hauntings once reported there. We have since reduced it to the lowest price was have had in years, Thirty-eight thousand dollars. Any takers?"

"Fifty thousand dollars." Lily suddenly stood up from the seated participants with her true intentions obscured. This was going to take nearly all the money from her psychic playing of the horses and stock market. The auctioneer looked at her and back to the representative of the real estate company handling the old deserted warehouse. They were eager to finally be rid of it despite the money they were losing on it.

"Sold!"

She got the property.


	9. Chapter 9

9

It was hers. It was all hers! A three-story warehouse several blocks from her parent's house, it was more than eight times larger than that house. It was empty, but for the equipment left behind by the last company to occupy it and the ghosts and cobwebs of its past. Lily gestured to the rear bay doors closing upon her mental command and turned toward the high glass windows reaching up the sides of the loading bay. She gestured toward them and watched as each of them opened in unison to air out the place. Finally a place to excise her full mystical power! A place to exploit her full power, a place to be what she wanted to be, a place to create her own reality, a place of complete and total privacy, it was a location that gave her all the freedom she wanted and all it took was a few horse races, some psychic predictions of the stock market and some legal finagling under a secret identity to obtain it. In all, it only cost her forty thousand dollars, a mere bucket drop from her million-dollar portfolio of stocks and resources. Only eighteen and she was already a financial powerhouse of wealth and godhood. She walked boldly and defiantly into the dark and dingy freight elevator on the first floor, leaning into the back with a toss of her hair and gripping the railing with a cocky pose. It's light flickered on for her... and only her.

"Up!" She demanded it. Somewhere fuses snapped into place, old wiring fought against age and neglect and coursed with life. Electricity crackled through the building, and the lift groaned to life, old gears and lines fighting against corrosion and refuses of trash to lift Lily with the elevator to the second floor above the loading bay. Her will and life force coursing through the building, Lily mentally demanded the elevator to carry her higher. The lift groaned and shuddered up to the second floor where it stopped behind the gates of the second floor hallway. She slid the doors to the side and strolled forward with insolent determination to control this building now at her command.

When she departed the elevator, the hallway started coming to life for her. Without touching a thing, Lily watched doors opening for her and partially open doors opening wider for her. Lights flickered on for her, and damaged lighting fixtures pulled themselves together. The fixtures without lights never lit up; there were limits to how much psychokinetic power she had. Lily's eyes peered left and right. The blue-green walls needed to be cleaned before they could be painted. The trash and debris would have to be cleaned up. She extended her arm toward an empty office paneled in mahogany and coaxed the abandoned trash receptacle out by folding and unfolding her fingers to it. It slid out for her and took a place in the corner. Extending her other arm behind her, Lily psychically pulled the loose trash in the hall across the width of the structure, mentally lifted it in unison and dropped it all into the plastic waste can. Tin cans, junk food wrappers, brown beer bottles, empty beer cartons, fast-food bags, an aerosol can or two, remnants of cardboard boxes… all of it scooted, tumbled or flung themselves across the floor past Lily and tossed themselves into the trash by psychic command of the busty redhead present. Some of the pieces even deflected in that poltergeist action off the ceiling and into the receptacle but not one piece missed or re-landed on the floor.

"Now, for my next trick…" The mystical redhead spoke to an invisible audience, spun round anxiously and turned left from the elevator. She gestured the trash there to join the other debris in the same previous receptacle. Standing in one former office, she saw a deserted desk, deserted boxes of files and stacked drawers. She motioned to the drawers to return to their places in the wood desk, watching as they levitated and fitted back into their right spots. The lights also crackled on to reveal the dirty white walls and a forgotten bulletin board. A glance cleared it off, a gesture tossed the crushed paper into a ball and sent it through the air into the trash. Lily walked up to the desk, gesturing it up into the air and them mentally pushing it against the wall she wanted it against. To move the heavy boxes by hand would take almost an hour, but she could levitate them all together en masse and stack them next to her by the door. She'd figure out what to do with them later. Some of the other offices were completely empty, but not all of them. There were also the signs of vandalism, and by concentrating hard enough, Lily could mentally erase them from existence. With untouched lights snapping on for her, the trash receptacle following her along to collect what jumped into it, Lily surveyed her new acquisition. She moved through it as a goddess altering it and preparing to fit her whims. Rooms opened for her, furniture moved where she wanted it and objects went where she wanted.

In the former employee break room, she found several old chairs and stacked tables. The old snack machines were empty; possibly cleaned out when this place last went out of business, but then could still be used for other means. Lily looked at them thinking then gestured her hands toward them, levitating them that she could handle them and then turning them to fit out the door. When she levitated them, mice ran out from underneath and surprised her, causing her to lose focus and drop both the machines at once from a foot off the floor. The whole floor if not the entire structure echoed from that distraction. Reaffirming herself, Lily gasped and relocated her intentions. Grateful to have not broken through the floor, Lily strolled forward, following the barren snack machine and leading the empty soda machine behind her out of the employee break room and down the hall to the stairwell from the first floor to the third floor. She wanted only one route to the third floor, which she could know about. Blocking the stairwell here made sure there was not that many direct routes in this place if anyone ever broke into the place. Of course, she also hoped no one was that stupid.

On the third floor, she found the main office, a twenty-foot wide room thirty foot deep connected directly by offices around a central work area. The only window was the skylight, and under that, Lily noticed that rain leaking into the building had ruined part of the floor. Much of the furniture had been moved away long ago, leaving behind trash, old newspaper pages from the Seventies, stacks of old telephone books, broken pieces of furniture, boxes of old files, a few broken chairs and patterns in the carpet left where furniture had once rested. It was going to take a whole day for even one person with her mystical power to levitate out to the dumpsters everything she didn't want. To adjust the floor, she held her head up, feeling gravity slip off her as she levitated herself off the floor. Rising up the to the skylight, she noticed the crack in the two panes of glasses where rain had leaked through. Upon noticing it, she could mentally fuse those pains of glass back together, but she could actually create a whole pain of glass from a soda bottle if she had too. Completely levitating off the floor, Lily was hovering two feet off the carpet as she swept the whole room by mere mind power. Everything that was anything suddenly swept to one side of the floor and with Lily off it, she didn't accidentally strike herself with her own power. Now all the trash was along one side of the room except for the particulates that required a vacuum cleaner. With another trash receptacle nearby, Lily had another trash bin to fill up with the debris she found. Her feet lowered her down to the room again. More in tune with her drives and desires, she checked out one room then another. Most of the former offices were empty, but two or three had desks or furniture left behind with an errant wastebasket or even non-descript paintings left behind. There were few traces of graffiti up here, but they all faded away as she mystically forced the original paint on the wall to rise to the surface. The private bathrooms would have to be scrubbed as would the employee one out in the hall. Lily departed the room with the trashcan following her through the third floor. This place was going to make a perfect private sanctum for her, and anyone stupid enough to invade her privacy here deserved the violence she would inflict upon them. She would turn the upper floor into an apartment, the conference room to a dining area, one office into an exercise room and another into a meditation room. The first two floors would be her entertainment area for terrorizing those who would violate her privacy. This was going to be her future home from her parents. She might pretend to run a business from it for appearances sake, but it was mostly going to be her sanctum for practicing and developing her power to their greatest potential. The first floor loading bay was large and cavernous, perfect for a meditation chamber with very little noise, but she was worried about intruders coming through the loading bay. Those weren't exactly as impervious as the one ground floor entrance. She narrowed her eyes toward them debating on sealing them shut. Her ears detected a noise, a scraping sound of metal on concrete. Lily turned to the front of the building. Someone had entered the front stairwell from the outside.

"Hello?" Their voice called out. It echoed to the top floor. Instead of heading upstairs, the intruder pushed open the door into the loading bay. He noticed Lily in the center of the bay.

"Hi…" He started strolling toward her. "Max Paterson, I'm an agent for Bartilson Reality who once held the deed to the place. I thought someone was here because the gate was unlocked." He produced his business card. "I'm looking for the new owner." Paterson looked upon Lily.

"That's my mother." Lily lied blatantly to conceal the truth. "She said I could wait here while she went to get some estimates."

"Oh," Paterson looked once around the old loading docks and recalled when the place distributed old textbooks to the schools. "Well, I've been the caretaker for the place for the last eleven years. I was the guy the police called when the building was broken into… If your mother's interested, I'm still interested in continuing in that capacity."

"I'll let her know…" Lily reacted with annoyed disdain.

"So…" Paterson eyed this girl's figure jutting through her sweater with moderate lust. "What's your mother going to use the warehouse for? Distribution? Circulation? Manufacturing?"

"I don't know." Lily was obstinately polite but secretive. "She doesn't let me in on that stuff."

"What does she do?"

"A lot…"

"Well, you must have some idea what she does."

"Look, mister…" Lily started strolling out the way he came in, her bosom lightly bouncing with each step. "No disrespect, but I'm not comfortable talking about my mother's work or my life with strangers." She pulled out her key to the structure just before stepping outside and reaching to lock the place up. "I cover what little chores my mother lets me do." Paterson stepped out of her way to lock up the place.

"Your mother isn't into anything illegal, is she?"

Lily made a face. She had not wanted to imply that.

"Of course not…" Lily turned her head up vivaciously. She made a scoffing noise at the notion. "Look, why don't I let my mom have your card, and she can get in contact with you." Her mind started working. "She's going to be busy cleaning this place up and deciding what to do with it. I think she's debating on keeping the building anyway."

"Oh, she's planning on knocking it down for the property?" Paterson asked. Without realizing it, Lily had guided him down to a path of uncertainty to keep him guessing about the structure. Was it being restored? Was it being knocked down?

"Probably…."

"Maybe I can wait and meet her as she comes to pick you up?" Paterson tried to keep up with her. Lily was striding out to the gate looking for her key to the padlock. The sun was dropping lower. She had not been home yet. Her parents were probably getting dinner ready.

"I never said she was coming back here." Lily was vehemently concealing the truth. "I'm just locking it up for her." She held the gate for Paterson to come out then handled and tattled the chain as she locked the location up again. She looked back up to the edifice standing defiant beneath the cloudy gray sky.

"But you implied…"

Lily looked at him matter-of-factly.

"Do you need a ride?" He asked.

"I'm okay…" Lily tucked the keys into the pocket of her jeans. "Have a good day…" She started heading down the sidewalk along Moseby Street down to Tisdale Street and cut down that street along a garage and a furniture store toward Main Street. She could see the chapel spire at St. Finnian's in the distance. It was not a bad walk, a bit long, but she knew this neighborhood well. Once she reached Schuster Street, she could cut behind the bookstore to the grounds at St. Finnian's and be halfway home. If it was dark, she could practically fly it in an instance of the time she had to walk it. Eventually, she reached her home street and was skipping up on to her front porch.

"I'm home!" She announced herself and removed her jacket to hang in the closet. Her mother turned to her, watching that large bust jutting forward from the girl's chest.

"Lily…" Claudia was still wondering about her. "Um, you're a bit late."

"I was over at Leah's house…" Lily outwardly lied. "Dinner ready yet?" She looked up with interest.

"Yeah, it's on the kitchen table." Claudia looked at her closely. Lily seemed to sense the scrutiny too. She gazed back at her mother, glided down the hall to the kitchen and pressed through the swinging door to the floor at the threshold of the back stairs. Her father seemed to be on his second plate. Jimmy was silently eating his dinner, Henry was discussing the events of his day over his meal and Uncle Eddie was talking on his cell phone off to the side. It seemed to be just another night. Claudia came around the kitchen counter, took a plate and scooped Lily some rice and chicken.

"You want some peas, some asparagus?"

"Please…" Lily tried not to notice the suspicion, but then if she did not remark about it, she might pay for it later. "Mom, am I in trouble or something?" She turned to get a bottle of soda from the refrigerator.

"No, course not, honey…" Claudia seemed happy one second, smiling and happy, then looking at her hard again. "I mean, you are my daughter, right?"

"That's what you keep telling me…" Lily rolled her eyes awkwardly and headed over to sit by her father. Sean reprimanded Henry for talking about the lurid details of his school day while he was eating and Jimmy mixed up his peas with his rice. Eddie's conversation with one of his cronies was getting more animated. He was getting tenser. He looked to Lily jostling that large bust as she scooted to the table and rolled his eyes away before turning off his phone.

"Crap and a half…" He cursed.

"Ed, watch your language." Sean tried to be a bit better than the dad they had.

"You know that old Moseby Street Warehouse…" Ed postured a bit and reacted upset over the news.

"You mean the haunted one." Jimmy looked to Henry and back to his Uncle Eddie.

"It ain't haunted, it's just spooky looking." Ed rose and Claudia took her seat back. "My buddy, Vince, was going to buy it up and make it into a garage in a couple months when he had the cash." He paused to pick pieces of chicken from the pot on the stove. "But someone bought it out from under him for far more money."

"Isn't your buddy Vince the one who ran that illegal chop shop?" Claudia pointed out. Lily started silently listening.

"He's a legitimate business man." Eddie insisted despite the truth. "Anyway, now he's stuck having to move his enterprise to another location before the cops… I mean… the landlord… cancels his lease. I don't know where he's going to go, and if he gets shut down, then I don't get my cut of the business I bring him."

"You mean the money you get out of the illegal chop shop?" Sean asked.

"It's a legitimate business!" Eddie rounded in eyes in frustration as he insisted. "I gotta go talk to him…" He turned to head out through the dining room. Sean looked to Claudia, and Claudia returned the look. With that reminder, Sean got up from the table and turned out of the room to catch up with his brother. Eddie was pulling on his jacket from tossed over the back of the sofa.

"Eddie, we got to talk a second."

"What is it, Sean…" His brother looked back somewhat annoyed with those distrustful eyes of his. "What do you think I stole this time? The piano? It wouldn't fit in my pocket…"

"Don't make me smack you silly." Sean recalled Eddie back when he was a decent brother. "Look, Claudia and I have been getting these ideas that Lily has not exactly been acting like Lily…" His voice lowered to a mild whisper. "I was wondering if you could, kind of, like… shadow her when she's not in school for a few days and find out if she's doing anything that's like… not Lily."

"Why?" Eddie zipped up his jacket and confided in his brother. "I mean, what do you think she's doing? Drugs?"

"I don't know, Ed…" Sean responded frustratedly annoyed. "It's just that we've noticed things that seem kind of, well, not-Lily-like."

"Like what?"

"Well, like…" Sean reacted covertly. "Like… getting good grades in school and not fighting with us."

"You're right, that's not Lily…" Eddie Finnerty postured a bit thinking about his niece. She could be ill tempered, nasty, shrill and selfish, but she was never the perfect daughter student. She was quick to challenge the nuns at school, break the rules to taunt them, insecure enough to demand only the best for her and selfish enough to demy her parents time to rest to cater to her wants. If all that erased from her acerbic personality, it would be evidence of brainwashing or an imposter. "Okay, I'll check her out." Eddie agreed to it. "But I may be late to the bar tomorrow."

"When are you ever not late?" Sean turned to return to his dinner. Eddie shot him an annoyed look and turned round to head out to cover his stops. Sean looked back to him then started pushing through the door to the kitchen. Everyone had finished eating but him, and Claudia was getting the dishwasher started. The boys were upstairs starting on their homework from school, but Lily was getting a bottle of water from the refrigerator. She left a long lingering warning look at him as if she knew something. It was as if she had heard him plotting with her uncle to trail her.


	10. Chapter 10

10

When Lily left the house to head to school, Eddie was sitting in his electrical car up the street following her until she went inside St. Finnian's Catholic School down the street from the house. Brad O'Keefe came out from his house to follow her, but Lily didn't notice him or bother with him. She joined up with her friends, Renee, Leah and Ashley, and they cackled and laughed in unison over incidents in her life as Brad mooned over Lily from afar. He'd been in love with her since Eddie could recall, but Lily just thought of him as the boy from next door. When she changed from just Lily to the incredible Lily, though, his hormones jumped to attention and saluted! Eddie couldn't stand it. Lily was never going to think of Brad in that way, and Eddie felt he was going to have to set him straight. He'd rather save Brad from a future of pining for Lily than watch him forever waiting for her and something that could never be.

While Lily was in school, Eddie drove over to the Moseby Street warehouse and watched from a diagonal angle from a coffee place at the corner. The distance was a block away, somewhere around a hundred to fifty feet. This day, he saw a van from Exact Cleaning Crews arrive with the keys to the gate and the side door. They spent five hours in the place and then departed so apparently someone was carrying out business for the place. After they locked the place back up, Eddie checked his watch and realized the time. Lily was getting out of school. Traffic was light before the school buses hit the streets. Hoping he wasn't going to be accused of being a pedophile from watching the kids, Eddie parked down Decatur Street down from the school and watched as the buses filled up on the one-way street next to the church and the kids came pouring out the side. He saw Henry first laughing and racing to get out of the place, and then Jimmy a few steps behind him. He was alone as usual. Not a lot of friends, a bit slower than most and taking his time, he stopped to talk to a fellow classmate then continued on to walk home. Brad O'Keefe was almost right behind him, out-going and jovial with his buddies from the Science Club. They didn't talk much about science; it was more of a fan club for Science Fiction movies. By now, the crowds of hormone-driven and drug-addled kids had thinned out and Eddie realized that he had not seen Lily. Where was she? He looked down the street to his brother's house and then up to Main Street. Eddie's hand reached to pick up the binoculars from his passenger seat, and he looked up the street. The secretive redhead was heading away from the school!

"What's the dilly, Mrs. Dolly?" Eddie reached to start his car. When he did, he heard a tapping at his car window. He looked out and there were two police officers there. A lean African-American male officer and a short petite blonde female officer, they were gesturing to him to get out of the car.

"Can you get out of the car, sir?" They asked him.

"There is a very logical explanation." Eddie started then felt his body spun around and his hands pulled behind him and handcuffed. "There is a logical reason for this! There is a logical reason for this!" He was screaming. His head pushed to the hood of his car, he noticed Lily the length of the block away and looking back at him. She turned round again and headed on her way. "You win this round, Lily! You win this round!" He started wondering. How did she know he was outside the school?

A secret grin on her lips, Lily headed up to Main Street lined with shops and businesses. She stopped off first at Exact Cleaners to get her keys back from the cleaning crews and then to pay their bill for the job. She used cash because that way the bill could not be linked back to her. Departing that place, she caught the bus at the corner and rode it to down to Tisdale Street, walking over to Moseby Street and taking a brief look of her surroundings before locking and relocking the exterior gate behind her at her new acquisition.

Letting herself into the structure, she entered the stairwell and headed up to the second floor, taking the freight elevator from there to the third floor. She had told the cleaning crew to take the front stairwell up and down as the top floor of the back stairwell was still blocked on the third floor. She checked that out. The machines were still ensconced just as had left them against the doors, but she still had the second floor doors to that stairwell to seal or block off from people she didn't want here. That would leave only the elevator going up and down for her, and as long as it only worked as according to her mental commands, it meant no one else could use it.

Both the second floor and third floor had been vacuumed. With the lights working, the blue-green walls appeared more dingy and a bit more decrepit with the better illumination. They needed to be painted. She mulled over that decision and looked through one office after another doing a visual check of the offices and rooms. The trash bins from the other day had been dumped out back into the dumpster and ready to be filled up again. Tucking her red hair behind her left ear, she motioned from one room and through a corridor to another office. The cleaning crew had set aside the boxes or moved the furniture in the course of their job, but they hadn't exactly been orderly in it. Lowering her head a bit, Lily extended her right arm and gestured the desk in the room to lift up off the floor and relocate over against the door into the room. She maneuvered her same hand toward the boxes in the room and lined them across the top of the desk against the wall as added weight to that barrier. That room barred from entry, she turned and looked out the windows of the room. She looked out over the grassy space under her and the fence cutting her property off from the empty row of businesses next door. They had once been a series of small enterprises. A barber shop, a vacuum repair place, a sandwich place, a fresh fruit and vegetable shop… but when the center of town shifted, the businesses started doing less and less and the bands of street kids and vandals started moving in to the area. They didn't bother the shipping place next door nor the garages or local manufacturers, but they did intimidate the small business owners. That's one reason hardly anyone wanted this location. Lily smiled a bit thinking about the first time someone tried to break into this place; she'd make sure they'd believe in ghosts by time she was through with them. She turned on her heel and through the corridor to the other office and back out to the hallway.

Mentally forcing the elevator to take her to the third floor, she emerged at her secret apartment to judge the work done for her. The walls had been clear by her efforts, the carpet had been vacuumed and shampooed, the abandoned boxes stored in a second floor office and the bathroom off the one former office had been polished clean. It still did not suit her at all. It had been meant to be a washroom, not a full bathroom. The space next to it was the private bathroom to another office next door. Lily flushed the toilet to see if it worked then started seeing what she wanted instead of two separate rooms with plumbing. Her desires reaching out, her wishes crackling through the plaster of the place, her eyes gazed upon cracks appearing in the wall, creating sections of plaster pulling themselves free upon both sides of the wall. Where there had once been a wall, she willed a doorway to appear to her and she now had an opening into another washroom with another toilet and another sink, but it was not a real doorway. The support beams were still there. They were little effort for someone of her psychic power. First the nails started popping out of it, and then the wood beams in their started rattling free. The doorjambs to the other bathroom also came loose and exchanged placed with the disassembled wall. Where there had been a wall was now a door; where there had been a door, the sections of wall pulled themselves together back into place. Lily now had a dual bathroom: two sinks and two toilets adjacent to each other. The extra set would have to be replaced by a bathtub. To conjure one of those was beyond the extent of even her power! Lily turned round on her left foot perusing the world she was creating around her. The rooms were barren, except for the few desks and objects she had moved around. She had no decorations, nothing to hang her jacket on, nothing to place her things…

She thought of all the objects in her parent's attic that could be used to fill this place. There was the old heavy mirror from their bedroom in the attic, bric-a-brac and décor from Sean's mother that she recalled as a child, an old dresser bureau purchased from a yard sale that had never been used except to store junk and even a old department store mannequin that Uncle Eddie had brought to the house and never took away. That might make a very interesting decoration properly clothed! It might not be a suit of armor or a family crest, but it was definitely something interesting if it mother had not lived up to a lingering promise to toss it out in the trash. Lily turned round once in the outer office picturing this place a home well away from her embarrassing family. It might not be the castle she wanted, but she was going to make it into one.


	11. Chapter 11

11

"You got arrested on suspicion of being a pedophile?!" Sean picked up his brother from the police station. They had allowed him to leave, but only if Sean came by to vouch for him. It was the hardest thing for Sean to do knowing his brother how he did. Of all the shady dealings he had with shady characters in West Brighton, it was hard to believe that the first thing Eddie would ever get picked up for would be for suspicion of being a sexual pervert.

"Say it a bit louder next time…" Eddie wandered out to Sean's car outside. "I don't think New Jersey heard you." He sunk into his seat embarrassed, rolled his eyes and took a deep breath. "I think Lily turned me in, did you tell her I was watching her?"

"Course not!" Sean had his key in the ignition as he turned over the engine and prepared to pull out of his parking spot. "But… I think she might have figured it out anyway…." Sean responded unsure of his own thoughts.

"What is she?" Eddie perched his elbow to the door and his head in his hand. "Psychic or something?"

"I don't know." Sean turned on to Main Street near where it split for the warehouses and businesses along Moseby Street. He had to stop for the light. "All I do know is… Eddie, she's different. She's… not Lily… somehow… I don't know if she's using drugs, running with a gang or what, but… all I know is she's different."

"Different in what way?" Eddie asked.

"Smarter than us…" Sean said it as if he was scared of his daughter for the first time. Eddie looked at his brother and felt the same foreshadowing that he was trying to create for him. It made him even more want to delve even deeper as to whatever his niece was getting involved with, but he still had other promises and convictions that he had to play out right now. His buddy, Vince, wanted the Moseby Street warehouse, and his scheme to get it was to intimidate the new owner into not wanting it. That meant a little vandalism and a little breaking-and-entering… Unfortunately, Eddie was roped into escorting him on the dishonest deed. At ten o'clock, they met at Vince's warehouse close to the expressway and then drove over to Moseby Street. Parking the car behind the deserted shops next door, the two opportunistic shadows walked over to the fence separating them from the warehouse and looked up at it bathed in moonlight. It's empty cold windows staring back like the frozen eye sockets of a skull.

"Aw, Jesus, it looks haunted!" Eddie commented on it. Moonlight illuminating his pale blue eyes, Vince dropped a burlap sack with spray cans in it into the grass, slid a wire cutter out from his belt and clipped the fence in several places effortlessly at an angle heading left to right near the fence pole. It was a bit cold tonight. Dew had already formed in the high grass and on the steel chain-linked fence as it chimed together from Vince pushing it up to the side. He tossed his wire cutter to the ground.

"We're going to make them wish they hadn't bought the place." He picked up his sack, brushed aside a section of the fence and stepped through to the parking lot. "We're going to trash this place and spray all sorts of gang symbols through the place. It'll scare them into selling it."

"The two of us are going to do this?" Eddie followed his felonious buddy to the entrance into the front stairwell of the structure. They had plenty of darkness; the only lights were street lamps running the length of Moseby Street and illuminating the sidewalk twenty feet away on the other side of the fence. Even with the moonlight overhead didn't notice them. Vince pulled the crowbar from his belt and stuck it into the door jam ready to pry the door open. He pulled it sharp, jerked it toward him and fought with it. It didn't pop. He tried kicking it. One way or another, he was breaking in to the place. Eddie just happened to glance up and saw a brief but large shape flit across the sky on to the roof over his head. It was bigger than a bird but flapped as if it had wings. It looked as if it was arriving at the scene to meet them.

"What the heck was that?" His breath appeared in the chilled night air.

"What the heck is with this door?!" Vince pounded and kicked at it, giving up on breaking in that way. "They must have reinforced it or something. Come on…" Vince gestured to Eddie to follow whim. They followed the dark eave shaped by the moonlight from the edge of the roof as if it was a path. The vastness of the deserted parking lot spread out around them. It was empty and desolate, rows of parked tractor-trailers beyond the far fence and above the hill along the back, the sounds from the wharfs in the channel between Long Island and Manhattan sounded with distant trawlers, tugs and steamers hauling their goods through the area. It was a great view of the city, but the two law-breakers didn't care for things like that. They were in the direct path of the moonlight overhead, but they were not seen from the street. Vince traveled across all three of the back landing bays closed for the night, clanking his crowbar with contempt against each of them. He reached the back door into the loading bar, stuck his crowbar in the doorjamb equal to the doorknob and forced the door open by brute strength. It popped open on his first try. Sliding the crowbar under his belt, Vince beamed to Eddie now that he had the warehouse open to him, but as they turned to look inside to the darkness, they heard an angry dissatisfied growl from the darkness. It was almost as if the haunted edifice itself was warning them against going any further.

"What was that?" Eddie asked the question.

"The gates of hell?" Even Vince was unprepared for that sound. Sliding his crowbar back under his belt, he picked up his bag of chicanery and treaded further, walking defiantly at first and gradually slowing down as the inner atmosphere preyed on their more primeval fears. The inside loading bay resembled the maw of a vast inhuman beast. The cobweb-covered square columns held up the ceiling above were like rows of teeth. The high windows to the right peered upon them as giant eyes looking in at them. It was so dark they could not tell where the floor ended and the walls began. All they had was moonlight shining in through the door behind them and indirect illumination through the windows. Vince, yet, knew this place, and even he was not aware this place was so imposing at night. He looked at the broken-in door behind them… it seemed so close and so far, giving them a chance to forget their foolishness and flee to safety, but Vince still had a grudge to carry out as he marched the hundred foot length of the loading bay to the front stairwell. He pulled the door open and entered the stairwell lit up by an exit sign and a security light, the stairs rising immediately to his left, a blank wall to his right and the unbarred door to the outside before him. It wasn't reinforced at all! Why hadn't it popped open for him? Was some force trying to guide him to come in through the loading bay?

"Here…" He reached into his sack, handed Eddie a can of old black spray paint from his shop and took a can for himself, vigorously shaking it to stir up the compressed paint inside it. "Start spraying some swastikas…"

"I can do a lot more than that…" Eddie started shaking and rattling his can. He turned to the wall at the bottom of the stairs and started spraying. He started with one corner and down to the other, Vince doing the same next to him. When Eddie started to finish the Nazi emblem, he noticed nothing was coming from the can. It was spraying, but the wall was not marked at all.

"What kind of crappy paint is this?" Vince had the same trouble. He tried testing an area to get his paint going, but it seemed as if the can refused to indulge in his act of vandalism.

"Maybe the can's defective…" Eddie thought out loud. Vince took his can and tried it. It wouldn't spray. He grabbed up his sack, grabbed another can and lurched off the cap, trying to spray from it too.

"All of them???!" Vince bounced the can off the wall out of hostility, the can ricocheting off the wall and skidding across the floor to tumble down the stairs to the basement. When he watched it, he caught a glimpse of something just out the corner of his eyes. For a second he thought he was being watched. On the landing up to the second floor, he could have sworn he saw a very brief presence watching them. It was only for a brief second. The figure was covered in a long cloak and hood concealing its identity, but in the blink of an eye, it had vanished. Eddie had a brief glance at it before it vanished. It was just there one minute and gone the next.

"Did you see that?" Vince tagged Eddie to get his opinion. "Hey, who's here?!" He called to the darkness then cocked his head to the silence. It was eerily quiet. There were no running steps, no sounds of a person running overhead. They didn't even get the sounds of the world outside the building. The warehouse was like one giant sensory deprivation tank, erasing the outside world from getting in and heightening everything that happened inside.

"Why don't we just get out of here?" Eddie looked to Vince's profile in darkness.

"Hell, no…" Vince snapped under his breath, his hand pulling back his curly brown hair. "We came here to do a job…" He grabbed up his sack and handed Eddie two of his spray cans. "Some of these cans have got to work!" He started tramping up the stairs to the second floor. Looking for figures lurking ahead and overhead, he reached the middle landing and looked around to the second floor for anyone ahead of him. Rattling his can along the way, he sprayed a long line of red paint up along the wall and toward to the second floor above the landing bay. He had a can that worked. Eddie looked around first, left and right and then clicked on the lights. The lights flicked a bit and came on to the rows of doors to empty rooms and offices. Vince dropped his sack and turned his working spray can to the wall across from the stairwell. He held it up and pressed in the tip expecting red paint to come out, but nothing happened.

"What the?" He cursed and shook the can again. Eddie wasn't getting any paint either. With a can in each hand, he'd have figured he'd have at least one working can, but he had nothing. It was as if the cans refused to do what they wanted.

"What the hell is going on here??!" Vince cursed, tossed his can violently under his temper into the room behind him and turned to his bag on the floor. Where was his bag?! It was just by his left foot!

"What? You think I know?!!" Eddie looked at him with disbelief. "I told you this place was haunted!"

"Where's my bag, Eddie?!!" Vince was getting more frustrated and hostile by the minute. He grabbed Eddie unable to control his temper and pushed him into the wall, but when they swung around, they noticed something at the end of the hall. That presence they had seen mere moments earlier was back, but it was much more obvious, more physical than an intangible illusion. It was a slight cloaked figure, covered from floor to head in a long dark gray robe with a hood, standing before the office in the corner at the end of the hall. Its head slightly bowed to hide their identity, hands pressed together as part of some religious gesture, she looked at if it was waiting for them.

"That is no ghost!" Vince announced. "It's someone screwing with us!" He slid his crowbar out from his belt and reared it as a weapon. He was ready to pound it into the head of this person, but he found his weapon somehow lurched from his hand and propelled through the air to the hand of his likely victim. He did a double take toward that feat, looked at his empty hand and back to Eddie, who reacted stunned at that feat of illusion. The figure took the crowbar in her white female hands and bent it in half! Both of the intruders and would-be vandals choked on the sight of that.

"Screw this…" Vince mumbled under breath and spun round ready to forget all about this place. He pushed Eddie out of his way, knocking him into the empty office at the other end of the hall in his escape. The place had finally got to him. Eddie hit the floor with his shoulder and scrambled to get to his feet, but the door slammed shut by itself, locking him up for the moment from escaping with his buddy. Something wanted them divided up to handle separately. Forgetting all his desires for the warehouse he wanted, he raced down the steps for the first floor, stumbling a bit in his haste and lurching himself up to try the door in the stairwell to get out of this place. He pressed against the bar, pushed his shoulder to the door and tried to force his way through it. It still wouldn't open for him. It felt as if it had been wielded shut. He looked up to the figure coming after him. It didn't look like a person following him. It looked more unholy than that; it was floating and bobbing down the stairs after him. Cursing his luck, Vince pounded the door angrily and spun around to escape back out the loading bay. Upstairs, Eddie was on his own trying to break out of the deserted office, but Vince didn't care about that right now. The felonious distributor of stolen automobile parts was struck across his back by something he couldn't see. He bounced off the wall and landed in the layer of dust and grime across the concrete floor. His thoughts a bit swimmy, his mind trying to stay alert, he turned his gaze up to the door several dozen feet from him… and then upward to the shape appearing over him. It looked like a giant face appearing from the darkness. He'd seen it before, but where?! Coming down next to it was a vast arm over twenty feet long tipped with a hand ten feet wide with fingers like telephone poles. They wrapped around him and lifted him up off his feet. Vince Hyde started screaming as he was pulled up off his feet and pulled up closer to that giant female apparition looking down over him…

"Vince! Let me out of here!!!" Eddie screamed, pounded on the door and tried kicking it open to free himself. Losing his breath over his effort to free himself, he turned round to recompose himself, looked back at the door and watched it opening in toward him. Something was letting him free. Eddie looked at it once and twice and wondered if something was waiting to grab him. The light in the hall was out, the old warehouse was dark again and he was free to go. Eddie suspiciously looked round the door for that thing waiting to grab him. When it looked as if he was clear, he bolted into the stairwell next to him ready to exit this building. He rushed down the first flight then paused, that line of paint Vince had left on the way up was missing as if it had already been painted over; was that even possible? He ignored the first door and hastened on the same way out he had made on the way in. Vince was nowhere to be seen; he was likely long gone. Eddie's feet pounded the floor of the loading bay as he fled the warehouse. The stagnant dust-filled air of the interior was replaced by the sharp cold air of the night outside the warehouse. Running through the weeds and long grass, he started looking for the opening in the fence his buddy had cut on the way on to the property. Where was it? Where was it? He could have sworn it was at the pole closest the front corner of the building. He then realized he was right! The wire cutters were still where they had been dropped! The stinking fence had sealed itself back up!!!

"Oh man…" Eddie tried to fight a compulsion to look behind him, but as he nervously looked behind him, he cocked his head to the roof above him. That cloaked specter was perched on the edge watching him. When it jumped down to the ground after him, Eddie launched himself over the ten-foot tall fence, pulled himself over and dropped his body into the high grass. Refusing to look back, he raced from the scene looking for Vince around the car parked behind the empty shops next door. The car was still there, Vince wasn't.


	12. Chapter 12

12

Saturday morning… Lily woke tangled in her sheets, her duvet tossed off, one leg extended over her covers and her new bosom jutting up from her chest, filling out the top of her night dress like two friends she could not get out of her life. She sat up with an odd taste in her mouth, contorting and rolling her tongue over her teeth trying to lose the morning breath she had acquired. It felt like she had the taste of a corpse in her mouth. What did her mother make for dinner last night? Nothing. Her dad had ordered pizza, but then why did she have such a rotten taste in her mouth that belonged more to bodies on slabs at the morgue? What did she do last night? Oh yeah, she had that premonition of a burglary at her warehouse. To get back there so fast, she had flown over under cover of darkness and what a wonderful sensation that was. The rush of air, the unbridled sensation of freedom, the feeling of incredible power as she could take flight over the city… looking down over buildings passing under her as she returned to the Moseby Street Warehouse and entered through the third floor skylight ahead of Uncle Eddie and his larcenous friend. She recalled the fun of stirring fear into their hearts and the thrill of terrifying them… and then doing away with one of them through her wonderful new powers.

Lily burped a bit holding her left hand to her chest a second. She swung her feet to the floor with a slight yawn and raised ascendant with her head held aloft, her presence guiding forward regally. Her red hair dropped over her shoulders and cascaded down her back as she traded forward to the second floor bathroom. It was empty for once, but the scent of her father at the toilet and her mother in the shower was still obvious. Standing on the white floor mat, Lily turned on the shower and checked the water temperature. It was warm… gradually getting hotter. She turned round with her eyes falling on the counter cluttered with alcohol, creams, lotions and ointments. Jimmy appeared to her left as she lifted her brush in her fingers.

"Yes, Jimmy?"

"You going to be long?" His tired eyes bobbed to her chest and then around.

"I'm about to take a shower…."

"Oh, well, I just… I just got to use the…" His eyes gazed at the top of her over-filled chemise then pretended to be distracted.

"Make it quick…" Lily brushed her long red tresses out. "Oh, and Jimmy…. Why don't you take a picture, it will last longer…" She leaned forward to him briefly with her hand on his shoulder before gliding out to her room.

"What? Hey, I'm not…." He tried to deny he was looking at her in that way. Lily's eyes just rolled knowingly as she treaded back to her bedroom, brushing her hair out along the way and picking out her clothes to pull on after her shower. She pulled out her new white sweater and new denim jeans. They were black and hugged her body in just the right way to drive all the boys… and especially Brad O'Keefe nuts. The other day when Sister Helen asked her to math on the board, Lily was asked to take her seat again over finishing the equation because all the boys in her class were leering at her boob bounce as she jostled before the class. Her life at home had changed too. Jimmy was still getting used to her; it was as if he had a new sister. Henry was a bigger brat toward her. When Lily exited her room to return to the bathroom, Henry had exited his room ready to head downstairs.

"Lily…" Henry was much more obvious in staring at her breasts. "Aren't those melons supposed to be kept in the refrigerator?" He smirked his annoying juvenile grimace. Lily narrowed her eyes at him.

"Why, yes… yes, they are…." She rapped on the top of his head. "And it's nearly ripe too!"

"Hey!" He caught her insult and swung around her for the back stairs. Lily jostled her clothes and undergarments over her arm and turned her head with her wrist toward Henry as he reached the bottom landing. The spell she created resulted in her youngest brother stumbling at the third step from the bottom, falling backward and tumbling to the bottom.

"Henry…" Claudia was folding the laundry from the day before. She rushed over to collect him. "What's with you? That's the third or fourth time you've tripped there."

"I swear…" Henry looked behind him. "Something pushed me!"

"Nothing pushed you…"

"Henry, listen to your mother…." Sean tossed out random parental advice while his eyes read the newspaper at the kitchen table.

"How long is Lily going to look like that?"

"Well," Claudia heard him then gazed over to Sean for his view on the topic. Sean had heard the question, but he instead waited for her to answer it. Sean wanted her to handle it. Claudia nervously rolled her eyes round once or twice trying to think before even trying to respond to her son. "Well, uh…" Claudia tried to explain the delicate nature of female development to Henry. "When a young lady reaches a certain age, she begins to… uh, look like a… grown woman. You know, like mommy!"

"Mom…" Henry looked at her a bit skeptical. "I understand puberty, but she's like huge!"

"Henry…" Claudia stood erect again and turned to finish folding the sheets. "Much like your father and I, you just have to get used to how Lily looks now."

"Who says I'm used to those things!" Sean winced offended in mid pose with his morning coffee. "I still think she's going to explode!"

Upstairs, Lily chuckled a bit upon hearing that. While she was waiting on Jimmy to get out of the bathroom, her mind was reaching through her house and neighborhood. Her clairvoyant senses were overhearing sounds, her senses giving her visions of other houses. Next door, Jack and Kate Hennessey were engaged in ardent lovemaking while on the other side, Brad was looking at an issue of Playboy magazine while his parents discussed a trip. Across the street, Ray O'Neil was trying to fix his dishwater rather than call a repairman while a house over, Stephanie Sprouse argued with her husband over finally cleaning the grill he had used a few nights prior. As far as her brother in the bathroom, she rapped the door with her elbow to make him stop what he was doing.

"Come on, Jimmy…" She interrupted him on purpose.

"Just a minute…" He fumbled around a bit, flushing the toilet and pulling his pants up to his waist. Lily listened to the noises from sharing a bathroom with her siblings and leaned her shoulder to the wall while shifting her clothes for the day to the other arm. There was another thump to the door, the lock twitched and the door cracked open to the rushed curly-haired sixteen year old inside looking out.

"Wait, Jimmy..." Lily stopped her brother at the bathroom door. "What were you doing in there?" She wanted to embarrass him despite already knowing the truth. He reacted nervously guilty, his eyes bobbing to the top of her nightgown stressing at chest level then up to her eyes.

"Nothing…." He reacted embarrassed and averted his eyes away. Lily could only wince at the realization of the new effects from what would be a different life for her. He moved away to find a place to hide in the house.

"Oh god…." Lily moved past him for the bathroom and knocked the door shut with her foot. Once it was locked, she placed her clothes on the top of the hamper then reached up and dropped her nightgown with a light gasp. Jimmy was meanwhile heading for the kitchen, pausing to choose a box of cereal for his breakfast and then turning to retrieve the milk from the refrigerator and a bowl from the cabinet next to it. His mother was fussing with the laundry, his father figuring out the horse races for good prospects and his younger brother eating cold pizza from last night for breakfast.

"Sean…" Claudia fussed with another partially dry bed sheet. "We need a new drier. It just doesn't dry as well as it used to."

"Check the lint trap!" Sean looked up mildly annoyed with the money he was always spending but rarely getting. "It doesn't spin fast enough when it's full."

"I did check it." Claudia shot him a look. "It's just an old dryer that needs to be replaced."

"We'll get a new one when we can afford it." Sean checked the time on his watch and rose for one last cup of coffee before he went to open the bar.

"Hey, dad, can I have fifty dollars for school?" Henry tossed away another pizza crust. "It's for a field trip to the doughnut factory." Jimmy winced at his idiot younger brother's timing to ask for money.

"Sure, Henry," Sean humored him. "Just get it from the safe."

"We got a safe????"

"No!!!" Sean busted his bubble. Over to his left, Lily was already coming down. That had been a very quick shower! She was already dry and in her red and school uniform, brushing out her hair with one hand and carrying her books for school under her other arm. Claudia looked to her once, turned round to fold a sheet and looked back at her from her other shoulder. The red-haired diva opened the door to the refrigerator ignoring the looks upon her and scanned the icebox for something to be her breakfast.

"Sean," Claudia turned round once. "You really do mean it, we can get a new dryer at the first of the month, right?"

"I mean it, baby…" Sean peered up to her trying to be earnest. "As soon as we can afford it." He had said the same thing about a new roof for the house. Lily turned round to the conversation and looked between them.

"I'm never getting a new dryer." Claudia rolled her eyes and tossed the still damp sheets back into the dryer to run for the third time. At least, during the summer months, she could hang stuff out on the clothesline, but this was fall. It was still cold and drafty even when the sun was out. After Sean departed to follow the kids to school, Claudia passed on the option of cleaning the house to work on her college assignments. This was the best time to do it. She had several hours of peace and quiet before her kids started coming back home. Or so she thought, at about one in the afternoon, between her business textbooks and checking the stew she had started for tonight's dinner, she was visited by people to the front door. A brief sigh, her pencil behind her ear, Claudia lightly pranced to the door to see who was bothering her day of peace.

"Yes?"

"Finnerty?" The deliveryman held a clipboard. "I've got your new washer and dryer."

"What?" Did she hear that right?

"I got your new washer and dryer." The deliveryman stepped out of the way of his partner rolling them up to the house. "Would you like us to hook them up for you?"

"There must be some mistake." Claudia flashed back on what Sean had said. "My husband said we couldn't afford this." She stepped back as the dryer came rolling into the house.

"Sean Finnerty?" The deliveryman showed the invoice. "Yeah, he ordered them. All paid and covered. You want us to carry off your old units?"

"A new dryer and washer???" Claudia loved it. She hurriedly walked them back to the mud porch off the kitchen to show the men where to put them. "Oh, that great big wonderful man!" She started falling in love with Sean all over again. Her new dryer was a much larger unit and the new washer had computerized controls. She was going to have so much fun learning how to work them. When she got her copy of the invoice, she reflected on the statement. It was Sean's name and their address. One washer and dryer set, ten-year warranty, delivery, installation and removal of the old units… all for about $1, 350!

"Sean, what the hell did you do?!!!" She screamed at the amount of money spent.


	13. Chapter 13

13

"Sean…" Claudia called her husband at the Red Boot. "First off, I want to, say… I know your heart was in the right place."

"Uh-huh…" He was busy pouring several dozen drinks for a gang of football fans cheering at the game on the pub's television set and throwing pretzels, popcorn and nuts.

"But are you nuts???" Claudia looked at the invoice, shined with a smile over at her new washer and dryer and then continued talking over the phone. "Where did you get almost $1400???"

"Where did I get what?"

"$1400, Sean!" Claudia was stuck between fear and joy. "$1400! That's how much they cost!"

"How much what cost?" Sean was never so confused. He had rowdy customers, a floor he had swept that already needed sweeping again and was struggling with a beer tap that was barely holding together.

"The new washer and dryer!"

"Claudia," Sean sighed, held his head a minute and swiped his hair back. "I can't afford a new dryer and a washer. We always get them second-hand…"

"Sean!" Claudia raised her voice over the phone. "We just got a new washer and dryer, and the salesperson at _Bed, Bathroom and Beyond_ said that they were all paid for with cash by a person claiming to be Sean Finnerty!"

Sean became piqued by the revelation.

"Wait a second…" Sean looked to Kenny his bartender pouring another a beer for a customer and turned secretly to carry on this conversation under hushed tones. "Someone claiming to be me bought us a totally free new washer and dryer, with no strings attached, and you got a problem with that?"

"What?" Claudia looked to her fancy new units waiting to be used. "You didn't buy them?"

"No…… I've never even seen $1400 in my life!" Sean was adamant about that. "But whoever it was is now my new best friend for life!!!" He paused to pace back and forth a bit. "Who could have done it, Claudia?"

"Eddie?"

"I don't think so!!!" Sean heavily doubted that. His brother was a lot of things, but none of them was generous and philanthropic. "My dad?"

"How could he know we needed a new washer and dryer?! He's still in Florida" Claudia looked over to her unmarred eggshell-colored units resting on her mud porch off the kitchen. They were just so beautiful! She tried thinking it over. "It would have to be someone who's been in our house in the last two weeks that knew we were having a hard time and needed this stuff."

"I have no idea." Sean rolled his eyes and poked his fingers through his hair to struggle with the idea. "Who do we know with money to burn who would spend that much on us?"

"Here you go, guys!" Lily was back at the Moseby Street Warehouse and rolling open one of the loading bay doors to a furniture truck from _Bed, Bathroom and Beyond_. To elude her Uncle Eddie today, she had mentally encouraged all four of his car tires to go flat. He was so angry, she could hear him screaming profanity from two blocks away as she once again avoided him. She might not be able to do it forever. Eventually, he'd tail her to the warehouse and connect her to it, but she was placing events in motion already to cover that and her other lies about her new existence. Carrying a clipboard and pen, she played the part of a floor manager as the trucks backed to the bay and men started unloading crates, new furniture and packaged bathroom fixtures. Lily eyed the powder blue bathtub and fixtures she had ordered and marked them off her list.

"Is this the right place?" The deliveryman came in through the back door. "I've got three sets of bedroom furniture, a living room set, dining room set and a large oak desk."

Lily checked her clipboard.

"Looks about right." She looked up smugly. "The furniture goes upstairs to the third floor into the big room across from the elevator. The bathroom fixtures can stay down here to be installed later."

"Is someone going to be living here?" One of the deliverymen looked up as he rolled an unassembled bed the length of the bay toward the freight elevator.

"Where would you get that idea?" Lily remained enigmatic as she checked and guided the delivery.

"Hey, is this old elevator safe?" Someone else yelled.

"Of course, it is…" Lily checked off a few more things and allowed them to keep unloading. As far as appearances, they just figured her to be a girl with an after school job. They had unloaded the two regular king-sized beds and the canopy bed; there were still five bureaus, an armoire, cedar chests, a wood-honed coat rack and assorted furnishings. The deliverymen rolled things back and forth on two-wheeled contrivances and on wheeled carts leaving tread marks in the floor; some of them pausing to ogle the extra busty redhead accepting the delivery. In all, the entire unloading and moving took only about an hour, riding with the furniture up the creaking and groaning freight elevator was an experience to the men, but not to the redhead with them. There were a lot of strange whispers with this job. The large desk, yeah, but the bedroom sets? Who would sleep in this place, and what was with the girl? She seemed to know what she was doing, but she didn't seem bothered by the odd delivery to this place. She was moderately polite, generous with the tips and a very nice young lady, but she never truly answered one question with any clarity. After dropping off the furniture upstairs and thanking the deliverymen, Lily walked out to lock up her front gate and returned to the back of her warehouse, rolling up the bay door shut again and latching and locking it with extra attention.

On the third floor, she marched directly into her future apartment. She had boxes and packages of every size laid out everywhere next to a stack of mattresses about six feet tall to one size. Her brand new armoire was against the wall out of the way, but it was not going to stay there. She checked the labels and invoices number diligently looking for her unassembled canopy bed and then cleared it and spaced the other boxes around it. Stepping back, she then started picturing it together. One headboard propped against the wall and then the other stood at attention as her power took hold. The box then started popping open, tape popping apart, cardboard unwrapping… Lily gestured as if she was a grand maestro of a mystical symphony. Different headboards were matching themselves up around her and gliding over the floor to separate rooms around her. Her arms and gestures guiding the flow of energies she was weaving and controlling. Support beams and bed boards came together in rooms, untouched frames and flying sections of beds gliding and flying around the bosomy redhead, coming together all at once to link and connect. Surrounded by the network of flying beams and bedposts, the eighteen-year-old sorceress was achieving in minutes what it would normally take her a few hours. Hooks were connecting together, nuts tightened to hold beams together and a heavy section of the canopy bed lifted itself up over Lily's head and attached itself in to her new primary bed. Following those assemblies, the mattresses lifted separately from the stack one by one like a giant sandwich spacing its ingredients. Each layer turned along its edge with each layer heading to another bed. The top two layers headed for the canopy bed; the other four separately moving through doors before altogether flattening out and coming to peace in their respective resting places. Listening to each light thud, Lily eyed her accomplishments with proud achievement. She so loved what she could do with this power within her!

With the armoire, she was a bit more delicate. She had to levitate it and turn it on its side like the snack machines the weeks before, guiding into the room with the canopy bed carefully through a narrow doorway. Mentally guiding it was so much easier than trying to carry it herself. Her mind could sense the space in the door without her eyes trying to judge it. Her hand guiding it just a foot behind it, not touching it at all, and once it completely cleared the doorway, she mentally levitated it, bottom side down, doors out and placed it where she wanted it, directly across from the bed between the door and private bathroom. She then vaulted backward onto her bare bed and cheered to herself like a little girl. All this power in her body, and she had barely covered the extent of it!

Enjoying her psychic and telekinetic prowess for little over a minute, she forced herself up once more, leaping up to the floor and turning to the window in the bare corner. Her fingers unlatching it and pulling it open, she looked out the window to the two dumpsters below in the back between the warehouse and the incline up to the fence separating her property from the property along the Staten Island coast. It wasn't a great view, but it was a decent unobstructed view of the river and Manhattan across the way. Another sly glance down resulted in the tops of her dumpsters to open themselves up to her. Looking behind her, Lily's arm gestured behind her and she stepped aside from the following barrage of cardboard, plastic sheets, packing materials and the other strewn ingredients of her earlier mystical onslaught now furling and flying through the air and out the window to go into the dumpsters. There was not going to be a lot of carrying and picking up that stuff when she could mentally conjure a small internal cyclone to suck all that stuff out of the building and send it out to the trash with in seconds. Paper, cardboard, plastic, foam peanuts and debris sailed out past her and landed in the dumpsters out down below. With the last scrap of cardboard floating into the trash, the untouched dumpsters slammed shut and Lily closed her window.

"I feel like Mary Poppins!" She giggled to herself and stepped from her main bedroom out to the outer office. Her dining table set had settled in the center of the room, its chairs taking their places as if swept together by invisible servants. The large oak desk was settling into place in an adjacent office. Seven of the filing cabinets of this floor had been lined across the wall to make the room look official; the rest of them grouped in another room to create a would-be records room. Not that she'd ever actually use all of them; she just liked the look of it. A center place and old tarnished candelabra from home placed to her table, and Lily was starting to have the look of a grand penthouse inside this old deserted structure. In fact, as she looked upon the old candelabra, it started brightening and coming to a shine. The old tarnish was fading away, the silver rising to the surface, the entirety becoming brighter and brighter. Did she do that? She had to have. Her mind and subconscious was turning the top floor of this place into the home of her dreams.

The last bureau levitated, the final trunk placed and the very last piece of her furniture in its desired place, Lily checked her watch. It was already dusk, but as much as she'd rather stay here, she had to go home. The structure was already locked up tight, the front gate locked up after the delivery. As she backed from her last piece of furniture, her skylight opened up and she alighted up through it, levitating herself higher and higher through it. Her pocketbook jumped up to her hands as the lights went out on the third floor and Lily stepped foot on to the roof. The wind whipping the building at that height blew her long red hair around her. She took a few more steps, swung the strap of her purse over her head to not lose it, and dropped herself off the edge of the building as she did the night before. Gravity grabbed her at once, but then her power of preservation kicked in and instead of hitting ground as she did before, she was gliding through the air on the wings of air and the currents of the sky. Her body flew over her parking lot below and over Moseby Street over the brick and concrete canyons below her. One or few motorists and pedestrians might have seen her shape shooting by overhead, but as far as the world was concerned, she was a mere blip on their radar. From the kid who saw her dash past his window to the Chinese lady who whirled round to see her fly overhead, no one paid much attention to anything that was probably just a large bird or a child's toy flying through the air. By time anyone really tried to get a good look, Lily was already back to earth, her feet on the back property of her school, cutting through the basketball court and hiking through the gate to the side walkway of the school for the sidewalk to her house. This time as the mystical redhead passed through, company met her. Sister Helen Costello, one of her teachers, was coming out the faculty entrance on her way home. She was a strict nun; her eyes peered upon Lily with suspicious curiosity.

"Miss Finnerty…" The forty-eight year old nun confronted the suddenly busty eighteen-year-old. "What are you doing here? You're here kind of late."

"I'm just cutting through." Lily postured a bit with her purse. "I was at Leah's house."

"Oh, I see…" The St. Finnian's educator wasn't sure if she was ready to accept that excuse at face value, but she accepted it for now. "Well, you should not be here on school grounds without custodial guardianship." Sister Helen spoke as she advanced on her automobile and unlocked the driver's side door.

"Well, you're here." Lily pointed out.

"Yes, well, not for long…" Her teacher spoke over her car. "I'm meeting Father Michael in thirty minutes, and, uh, Miss Finnerty?" She got the over-developed redhead's attention. "I've noticed your grades have been improving very well, and you haven't had any disciplinary trouble in a week. However, if I discover your grades have been the result of cheating, I will have you tossed from this school."

"Sister Helen…" Lily mugged knowingly with a bratty gesture of the head. "I'll take that under advisement." She beamed enigmatically and turned on her heel for home. Tossing her purse into her car, Sister Helen slid in behind the steering wheel and pulled her car door shut. With her foot on the brake, she slid the car key already in her hand into the ignition, turning the engine over before pulling her seat belt over her. Car in reverse, she released the brake and started backing out to head to her meeting. She hard a loud pop as the front left corner of her vehicle dipped lower and then the back right corner of her car blew and dropped lower. Her other front tire went and then her last tire blew. Her face went into shock. All the tires at once??!

"No!!!!" She whined grievingly and looked to the small plastic statue of Jesus Christ on her dashboard for guidance.


	14. Chapter 14

14

"I love my new washer." Claudia was singing and chanting as her new efficient washer and dryer did her laundry faster. "I love my new dryer." She was giddy and happy. She finally had something in the house that did not previously belong to someone else. The dryer hummed like a happy giant cat as it dried her sheets on the first try. She spun around and gave her husband a big hug and kiss.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Sean was happy for her too as he tried to get his dad on the kitchen phone. "Hey, dad… sorry to bother you at Uncle Earl's, but did you or he buy Claudia and I a new washer and dryer?"

"Sean, what kind of money do you think I have?" His father spoke from Florida. "We didn't do any such thing!"

"I know. I know." Sean noticed his daughter coming through the back door. "But someone bought us a new washer and dryer and I'm trying to figure out who it was. I'm calling everyone we know with that sort of money."

"What about your brother?"

"Dad, the only person Eddie cares about is himself!"

"Hey, I take offense." Eddie looked up at that bit of slander. "I could be generous."

"Eddie…" Claudia recovered her pot of stew to keep the steam in after Lily checked it out. "A new refrigerator? A new hot water heater?" She hoped he was their mysterious new benefactor.

"Claudia…." Eddie reared his look at her with disbelief. "If I had $1400, do you think I'd still be driving that piece of crap parked at the curb?" He rose from the table and wandered past his brother talking to their father at the curb. Lily had dropped her purse at the range top to relax a moment, sip a bottle of water and watch the scene unfolding before her. "You know…" He continued. "You could have a bug in your house. The CIA does it all the time. They plant a hidden microphone, do you a few favors to get your attention and then enlist you to do a few jobs for them."

"Eddie, that's one of the stupidest thing I have ever heard!!" Sean ended his talk with his father and hung up the phone. He was running out of people to call about the new washer and dryer. "The CIA does not have a bug in our house!"

"I so want a new car!" Claudia spoke out loud to the room. Lily smirked at the results of her hidden generosity, and her father looked at her mother.

"What?" Claudia looked at the three of them and tried to excuse her silly effort. She was just so thrilled over her new washer and dryer. If she could get anything else the same way, she'd go for it. "Lily," She picked up her daughter's pocketbook. "Put this away, set the table for me and tell your brothers to wash up for dinner." A cell phone somehow jumped from the open purse and Sean grabbed it out of the air. It was a very nice pink phone. It was an expensive one. Father turned to daughter.

"Lily, where'd you get a cell phone?" He confronted her with it. "You know we can't afford it. Where'd you get it?"

"I got a job." Lily stood defiantly prepared and mentally rehearsed for her parents. "I answered an ad in the paper and for five hundred dollars a week, I collect and gather paperwork, deliver paychecks across town, fill out forms and open up the warehouse on Moseby for deliveries for a lady living in Boston who purchased the place." She put a nice slant on her secret activities. Her parents looked upon her trying to decide what to think.

"You're working for the lady that bought that place?" Eddie rose from the breakfast upon hearing the news that his niece was working for the new owner of the place he had tried to vandalize. He rolled his eyes and bobbed his head trying to accept the news. "Well, you can tell your employer that that place is haunted!" He paused for a look. "I happened to know about two guys who broke into that place and got the cahones scared out of them, and one of them is still missing!"

"Eddie…" Claudia scoffed at that story. "That never happened!"

"It happened!"

"Look…" Lily turned round maturely and counted off from her fingers. "It doesn't interfere with my school work, I can get most of it done within my free time and a lot of my stops are on the way home from school. Best of all, it is really easy work plus I'm saving a lot of money for college." She had exaggerated a bit. She did not mention her investments, securities, stocks, properties or the mystical powers that enabled her to predict the stock market.

"All that for five hundred dollars a week?" Claudia thought something about that job sounded too good to be true. "That's almost $2000 a month!"

"You're going to blow it all on clothes and shoes…" Sean knew his daughter.

"And cappuccinos…" Lily reminded them. "Don't forget my cappuccinos…" She collected her cell phone and pocketbook and turned to set the dinner table for her mother.

"Lily, wait…" Claudia stopped her. "You…" She chuckled disbelievingly a bit. "You didn't by any chance buy me a brand-new washer and dryer, did you?" Sean had turned around for the response.

"Mom…" Lily giggled at the mere idea. "Do you really think I'd waste my money buying something like that?" She scoffed and headed out to the foyer to get ready for dinner. She headed through the dining room; she had already set the table with a mere mental thought and no one had noticed. Her mother hadn't noticed. She turned back to the kitchen.

"Well, it was worth a shot…" She palmed her head on trying to solve that mystery.


	15. Chapter 15

15

Lily sat in her desk in Sister Helen's history class. It was a classroom of eighteen kids; only public schools were more crowded. For the test, she just read the question and checked off the answers. It didn't require much thought; her heightened instinctive and intuitive mental falculties giving her the answers. In math, she could just barely control her hand from computing the figures her brain was processing. In science, the solutions were pulled from out of the universe. In literature, she was feeling the vibrations of both long-dead writers and authors. Gym was the hardest. She had to purposely hold herself back from punching the volleyball into Westchester County or levitating herself off the floor, but at least she finally had a reason to sit out of jogging and exercise. The nuns did not want her now over-developed figure bouncing around and distracting the boys, but it did mean she had to occasionally push a broom or run a file to the main office.

Sister Helen looked up in time to see Lily flip over her completed test and pull out her Harry Potter book to read. She still suspected that girl of cheating, and to try and prove it, she had created a very special test just for her. If she passed it, it might prove that Finnerty girl was finally taking her schooling serious, but if she failed it, it might mean she had the answers from the other test and had tried using it. A few seats away, Brad O'Keefe looked to Lily for other reasons. He still believed her to be his life mate and with the increased volume of her bosom, he believed it even more. It made her an even more obvious physical presence… someone with whom he wanted to be intimate. Somehow sensing his thoughts, Lily lifted her head up from her book and looked to Brad. He beamed his goofy grin over to her and around their test-taking classmates, and she sighed and returned to her book, taking notice the mystical inaccuracies in it.

The school bell rang and the kids started dashing out or pausing enough to get their belongings. A few even groaned to not getting to finish their tests. Lily bobbed down placing her book in her purse and joined Leah and Susan to head out to the hall. Brad was a few steps behind Lily to admire her. Once the room cleared, Sister Helen raced over to Lily's desk with her alternate key to check her answers. Her eager eyes scanned the answers.

"She passed it!" She roared under breath. "She passed it!"

"Sister Helen…" Her assistant, Sister Maddie, entered from the hall with a clipboard. "I need your signature to approve the menu for next week."

"Yes, of course…" Her superior signed the board.

"Oh, and the football team seem to be growing rowdy again." Sister Maddie continued as Sister Helen collected her students' papers. "They locked poor Jimmy Finnerty into a locker and he missed two classes as a result."

"Have them start working in the cafeteria." Sister Helen exited the room with the tests for her office. "Anything but cooking."

"Sister Helen…" Sister Maddie followed the school's head mistress. "We are also missing a lot of office supplies. Paper, blotters, pens, pencils, whole boxes of paper clips, an entire note board… I think someone has been taking from our supply closet."

"We keep that locked, right?" Sister Helen carried on school business. "Who else has access to the key?"

"Only Sister Lindsay, Sister Samantha and myself…" Sister Maddie kept up through the slow pace through the school. "But whoever took this stuff, left us this…" She held up an envelope with two hundred dollar bills. "It was taped to the inside door of the closet."

"$200 for less than fifty dollars of supplies…" Sister Helen stopped and took the envelope. "Our thief has a generous heart." She walked past Sister Katherine's study hall. Sitting near the door, Lily looked out at them crossing by the room and returned to her book. This was her last class for the day and with her homework finished in class, the rest of her time in school was a breeze. This near cosmic awareness she had now had made her nearly the model student, she was acing her class work fast and easy with barely a thought. School had never been this easy for her. She was an average student before, but now she seemed to be getting dangerously close to becoming a gifted prodigy. She just had to get one answer wrong once in a while.

Seconds before the bell, Lily paused from her book and placed her bookmark in her chapter, placed her book in her purse and rose from her seat at the exact second the school bell rang. She had clairvoyantly timed that right to walk out the door at the exact moment the bell rang. Behind her, Brad grabbed up his books in a hurry to try and walk beside her and enjoy her new body from afar. He took his schoolbooks, stuffed them into his pack and dodged around Bridget Fitzpatrick and Ashley Song impeding his path. Those two always walked together to slow down anyone behind them. He slipped past Eric Cassidy stalling at the doorway to get into the hall, veered around Sister Brenda, the home economics teacher, and gazed around looking for Lily in order to walk her home. The suddenly busty redhead was nowhere in immediate sight. She was either very fast or working hard to elude him.

Pushing out the doors of the west side entrance, Lily hiked her pack up over her shoulder and discreetly yet nonchalantly headed down the sidewalk, around the cars parked at the end of the school and casually looked both ways before crossing the street. As she walked, she listened to her shoes scuffing along the sidewalk, the sounds of her screaming classmates behind her rushing to be freed from the restrains of Catholic school and then a carload of friends calling her name as they drove past her. Lily waved to them with a light signal of her hand as they roared past her. As she did, she realized something else. Her senses told her that her Uncle Eddie was following her again; this time on foot. He was not done with her yet. Turning at the corner on to Main Street, Lily didn't acknowledge her curious relative; she just stroked a long lock of her red hair back over her shoulder, not increasing her step to rouse his attention, but she did gradually decrease her step as she pretended to be distracted by the objects in the store windows she was coming up upon. She passed by the money lending place, the pet store, the deli and a hobby store. At the Starbucks, she stopped to check out her reflection in the window. Uncle Eddie was across the street watching her. He was garbed in a hooded sweatshirt, the hood pulled up over his head and his hands buried in his front pockets. He stopped and paused before the frozen yogurt place and looked in to check out the prices. Checking out the reflection of his niece behind him in the mirror, he watched as she entered the Mocha Jo-Jo's for her regular cappuccino.

"Hello, Lily…" Simon Bon-Fete, the shop's six-foot-two owner spoke in his Jamaican accent to see her back. "I knew you were coming…" He gave her an extra dollop of foam to her drink and placed it before her.

"Hi, Mister Bon-Fete…" Lily shined toward him.

"So what did the doctor say about your body?" He sometimes knew too much about her life and family. "Is it a tumor or a bee sting?" He referred to her extra dose of puberty having taken form in the extra bra size to her chest.

"Just my body reminding me I'm a girl!" Lily shined again with a quirky tilt of her head, placed down her two dollars for her cappuccino and took it up to take a sip from the edge of her paper cup. She winced a bit from how hot it was, savored her dose of caffeine and chocolate and rolled her tongue a bit in her cheek to extinguish the burning to her mouth. "Oh, Mr. Bon-Fete…" She spoke again. "Could I head out your back door? There's a creepy guy following me I'm trying to avoid."

"Is that O'Keefe boy still following you?" The tall athletic coffee maker often regarded her as the fifth of his four daughters. "Want me to call the police?"

"It's not Brad."

Bon-Fete gestured to his back entrance, and Lily beamed to him for thanks. She dashed around the end of the counter, past the restrooms and darted quickly through the kitchen of the former tea place and out the back door to the alley. The back alley was blocked from street view all around by two and three story buildings. None of them had back windows, just a network of electrical lines, power lines and cable lines over her head. Even with the dumpsters, it was a field of litter and scattered flattened cardboard box. Lily sipped her cappuccino some more, drinking it more and more without a breath, the entire contents of her paper cup vanishing into her within seconds. She usually finished it off within fifteen to twenty minutes. Her bosom rising up and down a bit as her throat gulped it down, she quaffed it out of existence within a minute. Tossing the cup into the barely closed trash receptacle by her, she reasserted herself with a loud gasp, turned round once with her school bag tossed to her other shoulder and looked up the back of the building. With just a light leap from her left foot, she vaulted up the twenty feet as if she were fired from a cannon and landed on to the roof of Mocha Jo-Jo's bracing her landing on her left hand until her feet caught up with her. Briefly claiming her presence on the roof with gritted teeth and eyes flared, she crawled clandestinely to the front of the shop and looked carefully over the front of the building. Cars drove by, pedestrians barely looked up and across the street, Uncle Eddie wondered what Lily was taking so far in the coffee place. He paced back and forth a few times, acknowledged a few people then decided to play casual greeting. He checked the traffic in front of the Starbucks and crossed the street over to the parked cars and then up on to the sidewalk. Heading a few doors down, he crossed the street again across Tisdale arriving at a southwest direction from his previous place. He pushed the door open into Mocha Jo-Jo's with the bell ringing his arrival.

"Hello, Eddie…" Mr. Bon-Fete knew him too. He collected the trash from his customers in the shop and returned back to the counter. "My daughter is not here."

"Oh, how is Nicole?" Eddie looked around the place for someone. He recognized Mrs. Rabinowitz in the window booth and Mr. Keanan and his wife in the table. "Could I get a non-fat double latte?" He asked as he glanced around once more. "So, uh… have you seen Lily around?"

"She just left out my back way." Mr. Bon-Fete answered with his back to Eddie as he poured his preference. "She said a boy from school was following her."

"Crap and a half!!!" Eddie made a face and dashed around for the kitchen. With Mr. Bon-Fete holding his drink, the shady Finnerty brother crashed out the back door to the place and looked around the alley. Lily was nowhere in sight! All he found was trashcans, a dumpster filled to the brim and the dirty end of several shops.

"She did it to me again!" He kicked the back door out of frustration and screamed in pain. It felt as if he had broke his toe.

A number of blocks away, Lily Finnerty dropped her school bag through the skylight of her warehouse and then dropped her body through to the floor. Landing in mid-pose, she stood up straight once more amidst her secret sanctuary and gestured her lights to snap on for her. The place was looking more and more like the grand penthouse of a fine hotel with things borrowed and taken at her personal discretion. Some of these things were even from her school! Her body spun round as her hand placed her book bag on the oak table in the room and further turned to a small mini-fridge stocked with cans of juice. She took a can of pineapple mango to sip during her stay and wandered into what was now her master suite. The heavy mirror fit well on the wall above her bureau where she could try on gown after gown after gown in privacy without her mother screaming at her to watch her brothers. Between the armoire on the other side of the door and the bathroom now equipped with a powder blue bathtub was the mannequin from the basement of her parent's house, its hair dyed red and attired to look like Lily in her other school uniform. Lily mused upon its appearance as she sipped her juice. She giddily wandered through her would-be penthouse enjoying all she had created, but she had still yet to turn the second floor into the haunted maze she had pictured. She wanted it to scare the hell out of anyone who came into the place like it had the other night. She wanted it where there was only one way in and one way out. The back stairway was still blocked off from the third floor and without her, there was no way for anyone to use the elevator. She looked back at her life-size wooden companion.

"Alone at last…." She told herself. "Peace and quiet…." She spun around happy to be alone to herself. Her body bounced backward giddily onto her new bed and she sunk deep into it with a beaming grin across her face and her voice cheering under breath. Oh what a wonderful place for her to be. It might not be a palace or a penthouse, but it was hers!


	16. Chapter 16

16

On Sunday morning, Sean relaxed at home. After six days of trying to have a business with a bar just barely staying afloat, he needed a day to relax and watch the sports network. Some Sundays were better than others, though. When Henry wanted something to do to make money, Sean recommended that the boy go down into the basement to straighten it up. In the last few days, Lily had been poking around down there, but when she wasn't around to clean up her mess, apparently off to do her job of running around delivering papers and doing something at that Moseby Street warehouse, Sean gave the job of reorganizing it to Henry for a few dollars. It got the hyper eleven-year-old out of his hair for a while. Even as that was going on, and Claudia tried to spend her Sunday relaxing if but to turn it into a trip to the market, Sean watched the sports channel for a review of the football games of the week. Behind him, his brother invaded his home.

"Sean…" Eddie entered his brother's house. "Is it okay if I hide out here for a while?"

"Oh, god, Eddie!" Sean reacted disapprovingly to his brother. "Just tell the girl the truth and stop avoiding her!"

"It's not about a girl!" The younger brother reacted with disbelief; was he really that predictable? He dropped down defeatedly tired next to his brother on the sofa. "Vince's brother, Steven, has been harassing me in looking for his brother."

"Vince?" Sean reacted a bit and looked to his brother apprehensively. "The guy with the illegal chop shop?"

"He's a legitimate business man!" Eddie insisted.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Sean's attention was more on the Bruins game. "So what happened to Vince? Did he offend the wrong people or something?"

"Uhhhh…" Eddie tried to figure out how to report what he knew. "He just kind of vanished."

"Vanished?" Sean reacted with confusion and decided the less he knew the better. "So why does Steven think you know where Vince is?"

"Probably because I was the last person to see him."

"Oh, god, Eddie!" Sean sipped from his bottle of beer and looked to his idiot brother complacently settled into the end of the sofa. "What did you do? What did you do?!"

"Nothing! I swear!!!!" Eddie rose to get a beer for himself from the kitchen. "We just might have broken into Lily's boss's warehouse on Moseby…" He mumbled on his way to get that beer.

"Eddie! Oh my god!" Sean couldn't believe what he was hearing. He set his bottle aside and headed after the idiot. "What did you guys do?!!!" He caught up with his brother poking through the refrigerator in the kitchen for another beer.

"Could you please have Claudia stop getting this generic crap?" He tried changing the subject. "It's a violation to my tastes."

"Eddie! What did you guys do?!!!" Sean's temper rose to realize the sort of person his brother was.

"Okay!" Eddie took the cheap beer as a substitute to his taste and popped the cap off with the bottle cap remover; his drink faming up immediately as the pressure was released. "We broke in to vandalize the place so the new owner would sell it, but we had the cahones scared out of us instead." Eddie sipped his beer. "I told you that place was haunted, Sean."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…" Sean wouldn't hear of it. "What happened to Vince!"

"I don't know!" Eddie still wasn't sure what happened that night. "This big black apparition attacked us. It tossed me into a room as Vince fled, but when I got out, Vince was nowhere to be found. I checked his apartment, his garage, his hang-outs… no one has seen him!"

"Did he get out of the place?" Sean asked.

"I don't know." Eddie sipped his beer again as he and his brother discussed the events over the stove in the kitchen. "All I know is, no one has seen him since!" He heard the back door to the mud porch being struggled with as Claudia entered the house. She was carrying a bag of groceries as she realized her brother-in-law was in the house. Her eyes rolled at the sight of him.

"What's up this time?" She asked barely interested.

"Eddie's friend, Vince, vanished." Sean answered.

"The guy with the illegal chop shop?"

"He's a legitimate business man!" Eddie insisted once more. He sipped his beer and turned round slightly annoyed.

"Eddie is getting harassed by Vince's brother looking for him." Sean filled in the missing details to his wife. "It seems the two idiots broke into the warehouse Lily's boss owns to trash it and got chased out by something."

"I keep telling you…" Eddie gestured to his brother with the tip of his beer bottle. "The place is haunted. We were chased out by something that could bend a crowbar in half!"

"Eddie…" Claudia started chuckling. "A crowbar…" She made a look of amusement then paused and recalled the odd bit of physical strength to have occurred in their house. Something that could have bent a crowbar? Something that could have also placed a dent in a cast iron headboard? Sean noticed her look. That was two things they could link to their daughter.

"Hey, dad!" Henry came running into the kitchen carrying something. "Look what I found!" He was a bit dirty and sweaty from cleaning and sweeping the cellar, but he had found something buried in an old barrel made of heavy duty cardboard under a stack of blankets. It looked like an odd form of artwork; a long steel rod that had been bent and folded and crushed several times over itself into a long staff bending and twisting over itself several times.

"What the heck is that?!!!" Claudia whirled around from putting away the groceries. Henry plunked the mangled web of steel down on the counter with a mild thud. Sean and Eddie looked at each other and examined it.

"I thought this was cool!" Henry liked it because it was weird. "Can I keep it in my room?"

"That's…" Sean thought he saw something else from it. "I think that's one of the bars for my old weight set!"

"That's what I was talking about!" Eddie sipped his beer and set it aside to make his case. "Vince's crowbar was bent just like that!"

"Sean!" Claudia now had her case to make. "This is what I was wondering about the other day! Something is very off with our daughter! This is not a coincidence! Her chest, her good grades, her head board, her mysterious so-called job…"

"What about her headboard?" Eddie asked.

"It's bent like a pretzel!" Sean looked from his brother to his wife. "Do you guys think Lily brought something home from that place? I mean, do you think Lily's boss is doing genetic experiments on her or something? I mean, trying to create a dangerous superhuman Lily?" Absorbing only a part of the conversation, Henry just looked from his father to his mother wondering of what he was being kept out of at the moment. He suddenly pictured his sister growing into a fifty-foot tall entity with inhuman powers and screamed his way out of the room. He was going to have nightmares for a week!

"Great…" Claudia turned to try and catch her son but instead turned to chide her husband. "He's going to be sleeping in our bed with us for a month!" She fretted a bit, tried to compose herself and took a deep breath. "Sean, there has to be a logical explanation for everything going on here!"

"What? What is it?" He was as close to wits end as she was.

"I got an idea!" Eddie took another beer from their refrigerator, strided over to the kitchen table and dropped down into a chair, propping his feet up on a chair. "Let's ask Lily! I just noticed her coming around the corner of the house and collecting the aluminum cans in the backyard."

Sean and Claudia whirled around and looked over the sink and out the kitchen window. Their recently busty red-haired daughter had suddenly turned her interest to recycling by collecting all the metal beer and soda cans in the back yard from the back patio, the grass, thick flowerbeds and from around the fence against the O'Keefe's yard. She had a big plastic bag from her walk home and had stacked the old rusty lawn chairs next to the bag on the old picnic table. She tried rubbing the dirt off her hands by dusting them off her blue jeans. Her wide bust size bouncing a bit through her sweatshirt, she turned on the heel of her boots and entered the kitchen to her parents watching her.

"Dad, I need some scrap metal to turn in for cash…" Lily pressed her way into the house. She noticed Henry's discovery on the range top. "Oooo, can take this piece?" She started to lift it up, struggling with it a second before using both of her hands on it. "It's heavy…" She sounded like a little girl, giggled a bit, fumbled with it and smirked with a rise of her eyebrows.

"Lily…" Her father faced off with her. "Did you do that?!" She looked at him as if she did not understand the question.

"What?"

"Lily," Claudia was a bit more passive. "Did you bend that into that shape?"

"With what?" She looked at them both a bit confused.

"Lily…" Eddie was even subtler from the table. "If I gave you a crowbar, what would you do with it?"

"What?"

"Lily…" Claudia tried again. "The head board of your bed… part of it's a bit bent…" She pulled her daughter lovingly close. "Um, how did that happen?"

"It's been like that for years…." Rolling her eyes a bit out of their loop of questioning, she finally knew what they were talking about. "That's why it's against the wall instead of the baseboard." She shifted the position of her hands around the twisted bar in trying to handle it. "Um, can I swap this for cash?"

Sean and Claudia exchanged looks.

"Fine!" Sean consented and heard an excited squeak from his daughter.

"I need to borrow the car." Lily held her hand out to her father for the keys to the family Rover. "I already stuffed it full of scrap metal and cans."

"Fine…" Claudia had turned to fish out her keys from her purse then paused and snatched them from Lily. "Wait, you got a job. Why are you turning in scrap metal?"

"Because I already spent my paycheck." The girl claimed and snatched back the keys. She fumbled with the bent barbell and the car keys out the back door. Dropping the keys into her front pants pocket, she held the bent bar at length from her left hand and dragged the trash bag of aluminum cans around the house to the car parked out front at the curb. A moment later, she returned to claim the old chairs and rusted out hibachi grill from the backyard. Claudia sighed defeatedly tired and a bit foolish for her crazy theories about her own daughter.

"What are we doing to her?" Claudia turned to Sean. "We're accusing our daughter of doing strange things based on the strange accusations of Brad O'Keefe? He's not exactly all there either!"

"I know…" Sean agreed with her.

"Well, I'm not convinced." Eddie finished off another beer. "There's something going on with that girl and that warehouse is at the center of it. Mark my words, that girl is up to something!"

"Eddie…" Sean turned to his brother.

"Yes?"

"Get out of here!!!"


	17. Chapter 17

17

Monday morning, the Finnerty progeny were up and getting ready for school. Jimmy was up brushing his teeth, and Henry was spying on his sister through her open bedroom door. She rose from bed slowly, stretching her arms and arching her back. Her size and volume of her bust were pressing against her pajama top, her buttons coming close to popping and firing across her room from the stress they were against. She suddenly became aware she was being watched and looked toward Henry in the hall outside her bedroom door. He stumbled backward and scrambled across the floor to get away from her. His sister didn't set a single foot on the carpet to reach the door, and yet, it slammed shut for her. Rearing herself up, Lily gestured toward her closet as one of her school uniforms jumped out of the closet for her and laid across her bed for her.

"Hey…" Henry approached his brother in the family bathroom. "Don't you think Lily gotten a bit weird?"

"I try not to think about it." Jimmy finished brushing his teeth and spit into the sink. He turned on the water to wash it down. Since Lily's inexplicable boob job, several guys were coming to him trying to get Lily's phone number. Some guys wanted photos of her, and what they couldn't get, they were photo shopping on a computer. It just made him sick to think about it. Henry came up behind him to brush his teeth as well.

"Well, what if we come home some day and she's sleeping in a casket." Henry's crazy imagination was going into overdrive. "Or what if she starts growing a huge set of wings from her back? I mean… she could be like this lady I saw in a movie and sucking our blood as we sleep!"

"Henry!" Jimmy was tired of this crazy talk. "Don't be so stupid."

"Mom says I can be whatever I want to be!" Henry placed toothpaste to his toothbrush and brushed his teeth. "What do you think she is?" He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror as his brother brushed his hair.

"Well, she's not a vampire!"

"Who do you think she's got in those things?"

"No one!" Jimmy was ready to swat his brother around. "They're just a couple of boobs!"

"Okay, you jerks speed it up…" Lily came in behind them in her bathrobe. "I've got to shower and do some casket shopping before school." Henry looked at her, his eyes bobbing at those things she had had chest level and back to his brother. He stormed out of the bathroom screaming at the top of his lungs. Lily smirked a bit laughing as she sat on the edge of the bathtub and turned on the shower.

"Great!" Jimmy realized his sister had been eavesdropping on them. "Did you have to do that? I have to share a room with him!"

"Why are you two so fascinated with my boobs?" Lily checked out the temperature of the water. "I'm not exactly crazy lugging them round and the sudden attention I'm getting because of them stinks." She pulled out a towel to throw over the shower rod. "Kellie Willows stopped talking to me because her idiot boyfriend won't stop talking about them. Do you know how that makes me feel?"

"Well," Even Jimmy could not stop gravitating his gaze at them. "You got to admit. It's a little weird the way they showed up overnight."

"They're boobs… not pimples!" Lily reiterated her point. "And unless you want to see them really up close, get out of the bathroom!" Her brother dropped his brush into the sink and rushed from the room. His sister closed the door behind him. The seventeen-year-old mop-topped youth dashed round for the back stairway and scrambled down to get his breakfast hoping his mother was making eggs. There was no such thing this morning. It was plain cold cereal this morning.

"Henry, for the last time!" His father was fussing with his brother as his mother paced and fretted over this recurring argument. "Your sister is not a member of the undead!"

"How do you explain those things on her chest?" He asked his mother. Claudia was losing it as well.

"They're just a couple of boobs!" She tried to calm her son once more. "Like I have!"

"Mom, trust me on this…." He looked to her with his hand to his mother's shoulder. "They are not like yours!" Claudia put her hand to her forehead in disbelief.

"Where is he getting this stuff?" Sean turned to Jimmy for help.

"I think Lily's been creeping him out on purpose because of the spying he's doing on her." Jimmy poured some generic cereal into a bowl at the table.

"Well, now we're getting somewhere…" Claudia found a way to resolve this, but first she had to wait for Lily to get out of the shower… or did she? Seconds after entering the bathroom, she noticed her lovely daughter coming down for school. Her vibrant red hair was dry and neatly brushed. Her Catholic school uniform was prim and perfect. She did not look like someone who had just seconds before been in the shower. Unless there was a time warp in the house, the little diva had perfected her innocent but oversexed look within seconds!

"Lily!" Sean confronted his daughter over her morning ritual. "Can you tell your brother that you apologize for scaring him?"

"Sure…" The eighteen-year-old redhead paused from ripping open her pop tart. She turned to Henry and looked down over him trying to intimidate him. "Stop spying on me or else I'll twist your head off." She told the little brat.

"Lily!" Claudia screeched.

"I got to go…" The red-haired diva turned her way out. "I've got to deliver paperwork before school." She made up an excuse for leaving early. She had left her book bag at the warehouse and had run by it to claim it. Running the several blocks would take too long, and the bus would be a waste of time considering her ability to fly it. The alley down the street behind the shops was excellent cover for her ascent, but first she had to lose Brad. He came out of his house in a rush to meet her when she tried slipping past his house.

"Hey, Lily!" He scrambled to join her still pulling his shirt on and struggling with his books.

"My eyes are up here, Brad!" She was still tired of him gawking at her chest.

"I was thinking… you know…" He tried to keep up with her. "We haven't done anything in a while. How about we grab some burgers after school?"

"Can't, I'm working…" Lily excused herself.

"You are?" He became impressed. "Maybe I can meet you there. Where are you working?"

"I'm not allowed friends there, Brad." Lily told the truth. She had made that a rule herself.

"Oh…" Brad stole another look at her chest and mugged a bit. "Well, let me know where it is and I'll get a job there too. That way, we can work together and maybe walk home together. I mean, that could be very good for our…." He looked again and found himself walking alone. Lily had just been by his side. She had stepped back a bit, but she was no longer around him. She had just vanished from him! Turning around, stepping back and looking across and down the street, he looked around for the girl he believed to be his soul mate. He looked around everywhere but straight up.


	18. Chapter 18

18

Returning home after her business classes at college, Claudia entered her home carrying her schoolbooks and a bucket of chicken for her family. Her kids would be home soon after school. Henry would be first, followed by Jimmy with Lily showing up late just after nightfall. She wondered a bit about that girl's job. That girl was making $500 a week just to run papers around the area? Something about that didn't seem right. The last time that girl had a job, she started buying up a lot of clothes and shoes, but now, if anything, her room was getting emptied. A number of Lily's celebrity posters had vanished as well as some of her possessions. It was almost as if she had another home somewhere. These were the sorts of things she thought about as she headed home. A lot of things connected to that girl did not make sense. Claudia hopped up onto the front porch of her house and fussed with her keys a second before realizing it was already empty. Sean was sitting on the step from the foyer to the living room.

"Sean…" Claudia looked at her husband. "What are you doing?"

"I'm bolting this box to the floor." He leaned back to reveal a shoe box-sized steel box he had bolted from the inside to the floor and being taped up like a small package. Once it was taped up, it'd just look like it just was sitting on the floor.

"My hardwood floor!" She screeched. "Why would you do that?"

"To test our daughter!" Sean reacted with self-assured defiance wanting to expose his first born for whatever she was. "Look, you thought she bent her headboard, Henry found my barbell twisted and mangled…" He wiped his hair out of his face and postured a bit. "Look, if my daughter's suddenly some sort of superhuman freak, I want to know!"

"But my floor!" Claudia commiserated for the holes that she would see from now on.

"I'll fill them up and stain it later…" He told her. "You'll never know they were there." Claudia stared at him in disbelief.

"Oh, I'll know…" She understood his reason but not his tactic. Her shift in weight turned her to the direction of the kitchen with the bucket of chicken, but then she heard her youngest son bringing up the rear. He tore into the house in his school uniform and found his dad wrapping the package.

"Dad…" He reacted confused. "Um, what are you doing?"

"What does it look like?" He looked at the boy. "I'm wrapping a package bolted to the floor for your sister!"

"What does a vampire what with an empty box?"

"She's not a vampire!"

"Have you seen the movies?" Henry recalled on his years of horror movie misinformation. "In _House of the Dead_, when Mila Kunis and Hillary Duff became vampires, their boobs got really big!"

"That's not vampires!" Sean struggled with the tape without ripping his innocuous package loose from the floor. "That was just really bad film-making!"

"How do you know? How do you know?" Henry proved he believed in everything he saw from Hollywood. "What about Kate Winslet in _Blood Orchard_? She got to be fifty-feet tall in that! Don't tell me her boobs didn't get bigger in that!"

"Henry, for the love of God!" Sean finished wrapping up the box, slid his toolbox under the sofa and groaned his way to his feet. "Not everything in the movies is real!"

"But what about Tom Cruise in _Valkyrie_ and Mel Gibson in _Braveheart_, you said those movies happened…."

"Claudia!" Sean screamed for relief. She appeared in the kitchen door to the dining room.

"Henry, go play in the backyard." She smirked and laughed at her boy's crazy warped imagination. The boy just sighed and rolled his eyes on his way to the backyard through the kitchen, his mother rubbing his crazy thought-filled head as he went by her. Sean sighed a bit too. These debates with his youngest son were growing crazier and crazier. He strided up to his wife shaking his head, but Claudia just giggled a bit and stepped out of his way.

"I'd stop letting him go to see horror movies, but Hugh Jackman and Reese Witherspoon have a haunted house picture opening next weekend I want to see." He headed for a beer from his refrigerator.

"You better hope Reese has something other than red hair in it otherwise Henry will have another stupid theory about Lily." Claudia understated the truth. Sean popped the cap on his beer and took a swig from it.

"Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily…." He mumbled her name tiredly. "I kind of miss the old Lily. This new working and responsible Lily is…" He tried to decide how to say it. "Just weird!"

"I know what you mean…" Claudia prepared the chicken for dinner on time, preparing several plates to pull out later. Everyone wanted a chicken leg but Jimmy, Sean only wanted the chicken breast, Henry hated mashed potatoes, Lily hated Cole slaw and she always ate the biscuit. "I mean, I can accept her job making her responsible and nicer, but that bent headboard and your warped barbell? Why didn't we ever see that stuff before?"

"Does St. Finnian's have a female weight-lifting team?" Sean thought it over as he leaned against the refrigerator.

"Lily lifting weights?" Claudia smirked thinking about it as she looked up from tasting mashed potatoes off her finger. "Yeah, I thought she was looking a bit buffed!" She chuckled at the idea.

"Maybe she got bit by a radioactive spider or something?" They were making jokes about it now. "Hey!" He motioned over to the door to the foyer. "Maybe we should check her closet for a Bat-Pole!" He heard sounds out the corner of his head. The suspected costumed crime fighter was coming home in her civilian identity as a mild-mannered, typical busty Catholic red-haired schoolgirl. Claudia looked out to her as well. They both looked upon the box to the floor of the entryway.

"Oh, uh, Lily…" Sean looked out the kitchen door and called to his daughter. "Could you, uh, bring that box into the kitchen for me?"

"Yeah…sure…" She rolled her eyes as if she was being over-worked, but instead of bending over to pick it up, she swung her foot to kick it down the hall through the foyer to the kitchen beyond it. That was the much lazier way to do it. One swift kick and it'd be in the kitchen. Lily reared her foot back, Claudia turned toward her and Sean made an extra look as Lily's foot made contact with the box and was stopped by it. She screamed in pain as her toes hit the box. Her body doubled over as she hopped to the sofa with her mother rushing to her aide.

"Why did you do that?" Sean confronted her screaming. "I wanted you to pick it up! Pick it up! Not kick it!"

"You wanted it in the kitchen!" Lily contorted her face in pain, limped to the sofa and screamed back at her father. "I tried to send it to the kitchen!" Her voice ached and whined as her mother rushed to her side, removed her right shoe and rubbed her foot. "How was I going to pick it up if it was that heavy?"

"How did you know it was heavy?"

"Hello? I whacked my foot on it!" Lily snapped back. Her father paced backward and around in disbelief upon realizing how this had turned out. Claudia rubbed her daughter's stocking foot and looked back at Sean just a bit annoyed. Behind her, Jimmy entered the house from school. He noticed the box on the floor.

"Hey, where'd the package come from…" He tried to pick it up but was pulled down to the floor when he tried to lift it up in his hand. Sean rolled his eyes at the comedy of errors going on before him.

"He tried to pick it up!" He gestured to his son rising up off the floor.

"Honey…" Claudia comforted her daughter. She rubbed her foot a bit. "I don't think it's broken; do you want help up the stairs?"

"I can make it." Lily had calmed down a bit. She took her shoe back and stood up again, hobbling a bit to the staircase and taking a step at a time, pulling her aching foot up behind her, standing and pacing at each step on her way up to the top.

"I'll bring you some liniment." Her mother offered.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…." The busty redhead mumbled as she reached the top step. Out of eyeshot, she looked down behind her and walked normally into her bedroom with a big conniving grin spreading over her face. Her foot was not hurt; she had faked that to throw them off their suspicion of her. Downstairs, Sean slowly and defeatedly shook his head as he looked at that stupid box. He wanted to kick it too!

"What's going on?" Jimmy was interested.

"Your father tried to pull a Tonya Harding on your sister, and it backfired… on the both of them!" Claudia smirked over the recent turn of events. Sean didn't dignify her mirth was a response. They both had thought this was a good idea. He just slid his tool box back out from under the sofa and unsealed the fake package to unbolt it from the inside again. Jimmy looked over his father's shoulder at the two weights bolted inside it to the floor.

"What were you trying to prove?" Jimmy asked.

"I was trying to prove your sister is stronger than she looks." Sean loosened his nut to unbolt it by hand.

"Well…" Jimmy thought about it. "Maybe she had a premonition of what you were doing and faked hurting herself."

Sean looked up. Claudia spun around from heading to the kitchen for the liniment upon hearing that. The two parents shared looks at each other then lifted their heads to the bedroom above trying to understand that girl.

"How are we going to test her for clairvoyance?" Sean reacted exasperatedly and then rendered a decision. "You know what…" He surrendered to the mystery in the house. "I don't care. I really don't care. From now on, I'm a need-to-know basis. If I don't know about something, I don't want to know about it…."

"Sean," Claudia exhaled while pulling her hair back. "There is something going on with our daughter. She's keeping a secret, and she being sneaky about it. Cleverly sneaky…"

"What? The job?" Sean followed her back into the kitchen. "She came clean about that!"

"It's not just the job." Claudia was looking for the liniment in the bottles of medicine in the cabinet above the refrigerator. "I'm worried she's into something illegal. No one makes $500 a week just by being a messenger."

"Maybe she's got other duties…" Sean paused to think about it. "Oh god, she's dealing meth, I know it! Does meth make your boobs get bigger?" He looked to his wife.

"No, Sean!" Claudia swatted him for being stupid. "What about Eddie? Is he still following her around?"

"Yeah, but he somehow keeps losing her." Sean pulled the refrigerator open after his wife moved away so he could get himself a beer. "I think he's just lousy at tailing people."

"I going to go put some of this on Lily's foot." Claudia waved the bottle of liniment around after finding the bandages. "So much for proving if she's superhuman…." She smirked and chuckled thinking about how ridiculous it sounded. "I think I'd like it if she was clairvoyant though." She thought it over. "She could tell me what to study for my college exams."

"Yeah…" Sean thought it. "And warn me when your father was coming for a visit." Sean turned toward the direction of the living room but not fast enough. Claudia had bounced the roll of bandages off the back of his head. They had bounced off his head and back into the kitchen. Rubbing his head, Sean just looked back to her and continued on his way around the dining room table and back to the intangible security of his sofa to watch TV. Suddenly remembering the steel box bolted to his floor, he put down his beer to hurry back to it and unbolt it from the floor. As he leaned to the floor and undid his bolts, it suddenly dawned on him: if his daughter was clairvoyant, maybe that's why Eddie had such a hard time following her!

Not quite thinking that far, Eddie left his car parked near the Red Boot and headed off down the street toward the Moseby Street Warehouse, casually walking the way down to check it out again. Acting as if he was just going for a stroll, he nodded to a fellow pedestrian, glanced into the hardware store then directed his gaze toward the place from the corner. He knew for a fact that Lily walked this way once or twice to catch the bus, and she would had to have seen this place more than once. That by itself told him that Lily probably had more than just a job here. Crossing Moseby Street in front of the deserted strip mall next to the spooky edifice, Eddie returned to the location slowly and hesitantly, still remembering his experience here the other night. He came upon the fence around the property and looked for the opening Vince had made. It was just not there. There was not a single new section of fence here. It was almost truly as if the fence had sealed itself up. Dragging his fingers across the fence a few feet, he loitered a bit around the corner of the lot, looked up and down the street of random cars going by and wandered toward the gate. It was chained up with a large heavy chain, and the padlock looked as if it was brand new. Looking around again, Eddie swung a hammer out of his jacket, took it by the handle and began pounding the lock. He pounded it once, twice, three times… each time even harder than before. On the fifth or sixth blow, it popped apart and he dropped the hammer to hurriedly unwrap the gate, push it open and then close it again behind him to look as if it was okay. He didn't relock the busted lock. He left it hanging as he looked around nervously around the yard on way back to the warehouse. He checked the door out front to see if it was locked… it was. Acknowledging that bit of info, he turned round to the side of the building, walked the openly sunny and windy length of the building toward the loading docks and once again followed Vince's path to get inside the place. In the rear shadow of the place, Eddie checked all three of the loading bays to see if they could be opened. When that proved a bust, he turned toward the back door once more, this time pounding off the doorknob with the hammer and kicking the door open.

"Just as I thought…" Eddie peered through the inside. "It's not nearly as creepy in here during the day!" He also realized it was dead empty. The place was as immaculate as a hospital though. The floor was clean and the columns holding up the second floor appeared to have been repainted. Anything that had not been a part of the place had been cleared out and removed. The walls were painted in a light blue, the sunlight pouring through the side windows casting long shadows across the floor. Eddie started traveling across the room to the other side then looked left to the first floor offices on the other side of the building. Only a third of the first floor was space for the loading bay; the rest of it was offices and storerooms. The first door Eddie tried actually opened. It was to the back stairwell. Not nearly as nice as the front stairwell, it was littered with trash and debris. Passing by the other door out of it, he swung on to the front step and looked up to the third floor wondering what he was going to find here. If there was nothing downstairs, there had to be something up here. This was a warehouse; why wasn't it being used to store things? If Lily did paperwork, there ought to be files being kept here. What kind of filing did she do for an empty warehouse where she was the only employee?

On the second floor, Eddie tried to exit the stairwell, but the door wouldn't open. It wasn't locked. It was just barred from the other side. Mumbling under breath, he closed one eye to peek through the crack in the door. It was blocked off all right. There was something big on the other side. It looked like a coffee machine.

"Who puts a coffee machine against a set of doors?" He asked out loud to the place. Turning the doorknob, he whacked and pressed against the door trying to get through it. He smacked his shoulder several times trying to get through, but that was pretty solid. Shaking his head, Eddie just continued on up to the third floor, listening to his footsteps echoing through the place. He looked ahead to the top floor. The door was in a separate place here. It too wasn't locked, but it didn't open either. This too had been completely blocked off to him.

"Don't they have a better place to put their drink machines?" He criticized the location of the machines. He whacked, and pushed and struggled to get through it, but whoever had blocked off these entryways had done a really good job. Convinced he could move a solitary machine, he rationalized it had been blocked in other ways as well. If it had been blocked, it meant someone did not want him in the place, someone with something to hide.

"Very good, Lily…" He blamed his niece. "Neat trick!" He turned and dashed down to the first floor of the stairwell, pushed his way back into the loading bay area and raced to the front stairwell he knew wasn't blocked. He had been in the second floor hallway. He knew that was open. His feet dashing toward the front of the building, storming into the front stairwell and then stomping up to the second floor, he grabbed the door ready to pull it open. The doorknob came off in his hand.

"You've got to be kidding me?" He looked at it. His hand striking and pounding at the door, he realized how solid it felt. "How does she get in…" He realized there was one other door into the rest of the warehouse. It was above him on the third floor. Tossing the doorknob over the railing, he ignored the sound of the clunk it made in its fall and raced up to the third floor unwillingly to be outsmarted by an eighteen-year-old girl. On the third floor landing, he slowly walked sure of himself ready to enter the place. The top floor was dark, but it could not be inaccessible, but it was. Eddie pushed and pounded against the door.

"You've got to be kidding me?" He continued trying to force his way through the door. "How does she get in there!" He pounded and pushed and fight to get through the door. There had to be another stairwell in this place. The second and third floors could not be completely closed off! There were offices up there. He had seen them! He had been in one of them! Losing his temper, Eddie rushed to the first floor again, back into the loading bay area and then noticed the double doors in the corner to a workroom. Right next to them was an old elevator…

"Elevator! Of course!" He chuckled a bit. It did not look safe. It didn't even look sturdy. He heard it groan when he stepped into it. Gazing over its metal interior, Eddie found the button to the third floor by the door and pushed it. He then stood and waited a second for it to go… nowhere. It wasn't moving. No power was going to the machines, no cables were pulling… it wasn't even lifting. He was going nowhere.

"She's got the power turned off…" He realized. "That girl has thought of everything! Well, not everything…" He was leaving and coming back with a ladder, and if anyone wanted to know what he was doing, he'd just say he was there washing the windows. Strolling from the elevator, leering around the wide expanse of the room, he looked up toward the ceiling of the loading bay for anything he had missed. He saw heating vents, pipes, power lines and then something moving around up there. It was twenty feet off the floor! He looked again and saw a black figure crawling around on the ductwork. It looked like a ninja warrior trussed up in black bodysuit. It sprang forward, grabbed a ceiling support and swung its feet out to come down for a landing. Right atop Eddie Finnerty, sending him reeling backward through the swinging doors into the workroom next to him.

"What the freaking hell?" Eddie had landed flat to his back. The breath knocked out of his body, he started rising, but that presence reacted again, grabbing him by his feet and pulling him back into the loading bay. There was the freedom of sailing through the air as it swung him off the wall. He bounced off the masonry and brick and hit the floor again.

"Give a guy a chance to fight back, will you?" Eddie scrambled hurting all over to his feet. His attacker was fast, and it was strong too… too strong. Whoever it was, they could stick to the wall over his head over his head. Eddie looked at them surprised at what he was seeing. Whatever this thing was, they were not human. They sprung forward at him, knocking him off his feet and tossing him twenty feet across the room. It didn't give him much time to react. This person could lift him off his feet and swing him around like a rag doll. When he slid across the floor to the back door, Eddie staggered to his feet and rushed out the back door.

"Freeze!" There was a police car parked out there with two officers holding guns on him. It was the same two who had accused him of being a pedophile.

"Thank god, you guys are here!" Eddie stumbled and swayed on his injured leg. "This guy is beating my ass!"

"What guy?" Officer Carol Simpson guided Eddie to the hood of her vehicle so her partner could cuff him. She peeked into the warehouse. There was no one in sight, nor was there a sound of anyone running away. She thought something flitted by over her head, but when she looked up, nothing was there. She started holstering her weapon.

"I'll check the place out." She responded to her partner, Officer Leon Webber, pushing Eddie on to the hood of his patrol car and handcuffing him. Officer Simpson kept her hand on her gun in case she needed it as she walked through the loading bay. The one stairwell near her was locked up tight, so was the second door into the first floor offices. A cursory walk-through of the first floor and the front stairwell revealed nothing. On the roof, however, Lily pulled her mask off her head and carefully levitated back into her third floor hideaway…


	19. Chapter 19

19

The day was going just fine for once. Sean was watching TV and repairing the floor at the same time, and Claudia was puttering away. Their sons were at a wonderful place called elsewhere. Lily or whoever she was wasn't at home again, possibly pulling duties for whatever job she had. At no time did Sean or Claudia turn to speculating about the girl, mostly because the deeper they analyzed it, the more weird and convoluted it became. There was an answer there, but they couldn't figure it out nor did they want to waste their lives trying to solve it.

"I'm going to do some more laundry… just for the heck of it!" Claudia cheered excitedly. "I love my new washer and dryer!"

"I'd sure like to know who bought those for us." Sean sipped his beer and worked on filling in his holes in the floor by filling the holes he had drilled with epoxy and sanding it over smooth.

"I think it was Lily."

"Why would it be Lily?" Sean spoke as he restained the floor he had sanded. "If she had, don't you think she'd lord it over us?"

"Only if she was hiding where she was making the money." Claudia responded. She looked at her husband. He was not interested anymore in the matter. No matter how he tried to figure out that daughter of his, nothing fit. Nothing made sense and what seemed like the answer scared him so as far as Lily went, he was not analyzing her any further. He finished on the floor and stood up tired but satisfied.

"There you go, baby…" Sean was proud of his job. He had filled the holes in the floor with wood epoxy, sanded it and had restained it again to match the rest of the floor. "I bet you can't see the holes…"

"I see one here…" She pointed at it. "And there's the other one." She pointed at that one too. Sean rolled his eyes annoyed.

"Well, you're bending down over it." Sean straightened her up. "Now look at it…"

"You're right…" Claudia looked at it while standing straight up and not kneeling over it. "I can't see them if I'm standing up straight." She heard the phone ringing, but Sean reacted as if he was expecting a phone car and hastened over to answer it. Looking back to Sean's paste job, she was soon only getting her husband's side of the conversation he was having.

"Eddie?" Sean screamed. "You're in jail again?"

Claudia looked over now.

"Yeah…" Through the phone, the idiot brother mumbled it as if it was no big deal.

"What for?"

"Breaking and entering, trespassing, destruction of private property, public mischief…"

"Oh my god, Eddie!" Sean was losing it!

"I'm also being connected to all of Vince's illegal activities."

"You said he was a legitimate businessman!"

"That's what I was lead to believe!"

"I'll be there as fast as I can…" Sean told him, but he really didn't want to. He wanted to leave that idiot brother of his sitting in jail, but then he had to do the right thing. He had to be the responsible brother again, and he hated it.

"In jail?" Claudia spoke with her hand to her chest.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" Sean grinded his teeth and bit his lip disgustedly. "I can't believe this." He grabbed his coat and headed out to the family Rambler, swinging the door shut casually behind him. He knew the route to the police station. He'd been there before when he was a young guy getting in trouble and he'd been relatively lucky with his own kids. After getting a nice parking spot out front, he jogged into the building with a slight jaunt and arrived at the front desk where he announced his name and reason for his presence. At the police computer was Officer Roland Tipton, a middle-aged African American officer with a shaved head. He didn't hate desk duty, but it was his turn in the cycle. He punched up the arrest file as Sean pulled out his checkbook.

"How much is bail?" Sean signed his name to a check.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars…"

Sean started fainting. He became dizzy, caught himself and recaught his composure as he stuck his checkbook right back into his pocket.

"Twenty-five thou…" Sean couldn't even say it. "For breaking and entering?"

"Well, other things…" Tipton looked up. "Some of his activities in the last few weeks have been, well, a bit suspicious." Tipton continued. "The owner of the Moseby Street Warehouse is planning on using the warehouse as a local headquarters for her company and prefers her privacy. We've also connected him by reputation to several shady characters who have been under our radar..." He glanced at his computer screen. "Maybe you know the owner's assistant, Lily Finnerty? She was all out for pressing charges."

"That's my daughter…" Sean winced at the fact his own brother was caught prowling through his daughter's boss's warehouse. "So, you talked to her boss?"

"Only the assistant…" Officer Tipton leaned back in his seat. "She was by here earlier to sign the arrest warrant. We weren't aware of the family connection between the two."

"Oh, god!" Sean was going through the pangs of frustration and embarrassment. "That idiot brother of mine…" He looked over to the officer on duty. "You see, sir, my brother has been following my daughter around to keep her out of trouble, and you see, well, he just went a little too far. He's a bit of an idiot."

"Yeah…" Tipton took a deep breath and slowly released it. "We kind of noticed that." He mulled around his desk. "Will this be credit or cash?"

"Do I…" Sean made a face of a man with the pressures of the world upon him. "Do I look like a guy who even has twenty-five thousand dollars?" He made another face of great angst. "Where am I going to get that kind of money?"

"You could just get your daughter to drop the charges."

"What?" Sean looked up as if there was a light at the end of his tunnel. "Yeah… I can do that." He turned and headed back to the Rambler. From the desk, Tipton looked at the pay phone just a few feet from him, but by that point, Sean was already pulling his seat belt on and starting the engine to return home. This was not telling a lot about Lily inasmuch as it revealed just how obsessed his brother was getting to busting Lily for whatever she was doing, but that was just it. Just what was she doing? Was the warehouse behind it? Eddie was arrested as he was getting close. Sean wasn't to check it out as well, but whatever was going on, Lily was at the heart of whatever it was. He pulled up in front of his house, switching off the engine and jerking off the seat belt. Fumbling with it in his haste, he jogged frustratingly back into the house. Claudia looked up to him.

"Lily!" He called for her. Claudia turned off the vacuum and looked up to him.

"What's going on?" She asked. Behind her, the kitchen door parted and Lily there with her weight balanced on her left leg. She was dressed in a button emerald green vest with matching slacks and a black high collar blouse.

"She's the reason Eddie is in jail!" Sean announced the news matter-of-factly and turned toward his daughter. "Lily!" Sean implored to her. "You pressed charges on your Uncle Eddie!"

"It was Uncle Eddie burglarizing the warehouse?" Lily acted as if she didn't know. "Dad, you've got to tell him to stop following me around!" She turned away ready to enter the dining room.

"You knew your Uncle Eddie was following you around?" Claudia responded in disbelief.

"Well, he's not exactly subtle about it!" Lily passed back through the dining room door and entered the kitchen. Her hand reached for the refrigerator and opened it with her right hand as her left hand pulled out the carton of milk.

"Lily, look…" Sean followed his daughter while she turned to the cabinet next for one of the clear plastic cups. "Your Uncle Eddie is in a lot of trouble, and, well…" His face contorted with strained apprehension. "We don't have the twenty-five thousand to get him out of jail." He grinned hoping his daughter had already stacked up that kind of money. "Now, we know you possibly don't have that kind of money…."

He paused to examine her response and reaction, but her look was so complacent it was hard to tell.

"So, I thought… maybe…" Sean continued. "You could choose… not to press charges?" He paused to watch how she reacted. Having poured a cup of milk, Lily lifted it up and was sipping it while she looked at her father. Sean could hear the milk passing through her throat; Lily took three gulps from her cup. Her mind was working.

"Dad…" She lowered her cup and posed before the stove. "How would I explain to my boss not pressing charging? I can't do that."

"Lily…" Claudia sighed tiredly and pulled her hair up over her head. "Twenty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money to waste on your Uncle Eddie."

"Then let him sit in jail." Lily responded as if it was the best solution. She heard her father groaning the noise same kind of groan Eddie was doing behind bars.

"Lily, can't you explain to your boss it was just your Uncle Eddie prowling… maybe that's not the best word..." He looked to Claudia and back to Lily. "Exploring! Yeah, exploring your warehouse. Kind of looking out for you?"

"Maybe, we could… repay her the honor…" Claudia responded. "We could invite her to dinner some night. Where is she from?"

Lily reacted as her eyes bobbed upward with an idea. She turned round sipping her milk and headed back toward the living room with her parents following her. This was so interesting. They were coming after her for favors. She had convinced them that she had a boss that didn't really exist and now she could start pulling in all sorts of strings.

"You know…" Lily scratched the back of her neck a second. "I do recall her interested in buying the Red Boot…"

"She wants the bar?" Sean stepped back.

"Sell it! Sell it!" Claudia began jumping up and down. She never liked that old rattrap. She'd wanted Sean to give it up for months now. "Sell it, Sean!"

"But, babe… we just now got it going!"

"Oh, please! You average thirty guys a week!"

"The bar, Claudia… it's the bar!" Sean didn't want to sell it. He loved running a bar, even one that did lousy.

"It's either the bar or Eddie, Sean." Claudia thought about it. "Which is it going to be?" She looked from her husband to Lily and back again. Sean didn't respond. He looked at her trying to think of a response.

"Sean?"

"I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"


	20. Chapter 20

20

It was the brother or the bar. Sean really came close to leaving Eddie in jail, but then Lily revealed what her boss was offering for the Red Boot. Eventually, Sean saw it like this; he could sell the bar and the charges relating to Eddie's burglary could be dropped, and then he could take the money from the purchase and invest in another separate business, one without Eddie that he could run on his own. It would be another bar in another neighborhood close to the house. He would call it Finnerty's and offer snacks and a big screen TV – everything he could not do at the other location. He'd even poll his buddies for ideas to make it successful. The only problem was that once Eddie was free, he was not happy to hear that they had lost the Red Boot.

"Twenty-five thousand dollars, Sean?" Eddie was incredulous. "Twenty five…. The bar was worth five times that!"

"I know!" Sean was still twisting in knots inside as he returned home with his idiot brother the felon. "It was the best we could get! I did it for to get your ass out of jail!"

"Uh-huh… Uh-huh…" Eddie was still looking at his half of the check. "Uh, another question, why is Lily's name on this check?"

"Because she's the assistant…" Claudia told him. "Lily talked to her boss about buying the Red Boot."

"Why would Lily as a mere assistant have her name on the check instead of her boss?" Eddie asked. "Why isn't her boss's name on this check?"

"Because…" Sean started realizing what his brother was getting at. He turned to his wife. "Why is Lily's name on this check?" Claudia looked at Sean then to his half for the sale of the pub. That was a very good question! Why would Lily's boss give the money to Lily to give to Sean and Eddie? Why not just give the check directly to them? Just what was going on here?

"Lily…" Claudia turned to her daughter sitting at the dining table and realized she wasn't doing homework. She was covering pay receipts and ledgers with vast amounts of money. She was doing much more than just a mere assistant.

"Mom, dad, please sit down…" She looked up to them. A little grin on her face, she closed her ledger and exhaled lightly as her parents looked at each other. "For the last few months, I've been getting these… premonitions… psychic visions of horse races and the stock market… and I've been making money like crazy!"

Sean and Claudia sat down at that moment. Eddie's jaw dropped a bit.

"You see…" Lily was shining proudly. "I'm… my own boss." She confessed. "I own the Moseby Street Warehouse and the Red Boot among several other properties, and I just turned over the Red Boot and the rest of the block it is on to a developer for a very cool two point five million dollars." She grinned ear to ear.

"I need a beer." Sean mumbled out of shock. He had been scammed by his own daughter? A wealthy business lady with psychic gifts! Lily reached to the floor and handed him a bottle of beer.

"I had a vision of that too." Lily continued.

"Oh my god…" Claudia was stunned. "Lily, you've been doing all this behind our backs?"

"Mom, don't worry…" Lily spoke frankly and coldly rehearsed. "Now, dad, since the Red Boot is going to be knocked down for a mall, I arraigned for you to start employment as the manager of the O' Flanagan's I own over on Decatur. It has medical benefits, paid vacations and you can make your own schedule."

Sean suddenly tipped back his bottle of beer and started gulping it down to get drunk. He suddenly found himself working for his own teenage daughter!

"Oh, don't bust my cover down there." Lily added. "They're not intimidated unless I have a fictional unseen boss behind me." She looked to her mother. "Mom, I've already arranged to attend UCLA after I graduate. I tried getting into Harvard Business School, but it was too late to get admitted." She briefly slipped off her mature tangent and back into a teenager. "I'm going to be majoring in theatre with a minor in business, but while I'm gone, you'll be acting manager of my accounts, signing and delivering checks, much like I pretended to do for my fictional boss. I'm going to arrange for a paycheck to go into your bank account for this work. Does five hundred a month sound okay? I mean… that's what I held back for myself."

"Oh…" Claudia was still very much stunned. "That sounds…" She looked to Sean. "Okay…"

"Lily…" Eddie came round the table and looked upon her, almost pledging his devotion to his as if she were a Mafia crime boss. "What about me?" He kind of chuckled. "You're taking care of me, right?" He looked to Sean and Claudia still deep in shock. "Who do you like in tomorrow's races?"

"Uncle Eddie," Lily slid her ledger away from his eyes. "I'm leaving you to dad as usual. If he wants, he can hire you as a bartender, because I trust him to keep you in line, but if you cross me, I know enough about your dealings to put you deep into prison."

Eddie's face went white.

"Lily…" Sean sat before his daughter, trying hard to hold himself back. "If you had a vision that the Red Boot could be sold at a big price, why didn't you just tell me?"

"Because, dad…" Lily responded honestly. "I also had a vision of Uncle Eddie screwing it up and you not getting the best price for it. That's why I had him briefly arrested. I had to get him out of the way for a while."

"She's possessed!" Eddie pointed at her. "Because of her, I'm facing twenty to twenty-five years in prison because of Vince's business."

"Eddie, shut-up!"

"The case against you, Uncle Eddie, is circumstantial…" Lily predicted. "As long as you don't do anything stupid and just turn informant like they want, you can avoid prison." She stood and looked over at him. "Trust me on this. You would not do well in prison."

"Lily…" Claudia finally forced herself to talk. "Just how much have you made from these… visions?"

"I don't think you could handle it…"

"Lily…" Sean was trying to get drunk really fast. "Answer the question!"

"After the sale of the Red Boot?"

"After the sale of the Red Boot…"

"Four-million, two hundred and seventy-six thousand…" She heard her father wincing in shock at the wealth of her psychic acumen. "A hundred and forty-three dollars…" Her mother clenched her chest at the devious secret financing her daughter had pulled off behind their backs.

"And ninety-eight cents…." Lily added. She looked at her parents. They were speechless. Her father's jaw was hanging open, her mother was going into shock and her uncle was reacting as if he was in a dream.

"You're right…" Claudia gasped unprepared. "I can't handle it!"

"My daughter…." Sean was unsure if he should be happy or angry. "…has turned into Oprah…"

"Another thing…" Lily added. "I kind of created a nice home for myself on the top floor of the warehouse, kind of a nice loft-slash-penthouse, and I'm going to be living there for the rest of the school year. No disrespect, but I just need some privacy otherwise I'm going to explode. After all, I'm practically eighteen and should be on my own, and I definitely can afford it now."

"Uh… Sean?" Claudia looked to him for him to handle it.

"How can we stop her?" Sean was losing it. "She practically owns the house!"

"Well," Lily started pulling together her ledger, books and papers. She stood up straight in her vest, blouse and skirt combo. "I've got to start packing my things up for the move. There's a truck coming to take my things in the morning." She moved around the dining table for the stairway. She thought of something, hesitated and looked to her parents and Uncle Eddie.

"You know, guys…" She beamed to them. "From here on now, I bet things just keep getting easier!" She spun round with a childlike giggle and pranced up the stairs with a happy little smile on her lips. Downstairs, her parents were still at the table and still trying to comprehend what had just happened. Their daughter… with the oversexed figure… now had more money than the two of them put together.

"She did buy that new washer and dryer." Claudia realized the truth. "That sweet little darling… This more than makes up for the labor I went through when she was born." She suddenly jumped up and dashed over and around to the stairs to find her daughter. "Lilly, baby, mommy wants a new car!"

Sean meanwhile continued sitting at the table. Eddie pulled out the chair and creaked down to sit by him. They shared a look once, twice and then three times. So, this was how it all turned out. Supported by his daughter…

"You're right…" He remained confused as he talked to his brother. "She is possessed!"

END


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